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Pascal Van Hentenryck
Adjunct Professor of Computer ScienceContact Information
Box 1910Brown University
Providence, RI 02912
Email: pvh at cs.brown.edu
Personal home page:
http://www.cs.brown.edu/~pvh/
Research Areas
| Artificial Intelligence |
| Combinatorial Optimization |
| Computational Biology |
| Programming Languages |
| Verification and Reliable Systems |
| Parallel Computing |
Courses Taught
About Pascal
Tell us a little about your background: educational, professional, personal, etc.
I once took a cab in California and the driver asked me where I came from. I told him I was born in Belgium and there was a long silence. After a while, I asked him whether he knew where Belgium was. He told me that Belgium was the capital of Brussels. I was impressed. Most Belgians probably do not even know that Rhode Island exists.
What do you focus on in your research? Any recent advances?
I mostly work on computational techniques for disaster management, computer-aided verification of processors, and computational biology. And of course, constraint programming, I was born to ... work on constraint programming.
What do you like teaching classes about?
Anything that gets me excited and of course that I am able to understand. But I am fortunate: 31 and 258 are my dream courses; they allow me to convey one or two fundamental messages on computer science.
How did you become interested in computer science?
In college, I enrolled to study economics. I had the option to take a track with computer science courses. I had no idea what computer science was, but I figured out that an option is better than no option. I fell in love with computer programming (and also a wonderful girl) and I switched to computer science after two years. We had a DEC-20 on which I could program in APL, Cobol, Lisp, and Prolog (only in priority 7 however) and an Apple-II lab in which we brought in some mattresses since the department closed at 10 or 11pm and the only other option was to jump from the windows, which we did a couple of times.
What is your favorite thing about Brown?
The undergraduate and the graduate students who are phenomenal. Also the concentration of uniformly talented and interesting faculty members. The students keep you hungry and the faculty curious.
Any hobbies or passions?
I work and I spend time with my family. They are my passions. I am the most boring guy ever!