I am a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Computer Systems Group of the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Professional Experience

• May 1997 -
  Postdoc, Vrije Universiteit
  Postdoctoral Researcher (funded by NWO) in the Computer Systems Group of the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Research topic: Scheduling and data placement in Wide Area Networks. Project leader: Dr. Henri E. Bal.
• August 1996 - May 1997
  Postdoc, MIT
  Postdoctoral Fellow at the Laboratory for Computer Science of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, in the Supercomputing Technologies Group of Prof. Charles E. Leiserson. I have been working on Cilk, a thread system for parallel computing.
• October 1994 - September 1995
  Research Assistant, University of Alberta
  Research Assistant at the Department of Computing Science of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. I've worked with the group of Prof. Jonathan Schaeffer on high performance two-player search algorithms.
• May 1993 - July 1996
  PhD Student, Erasmus University Rotterdam
  Assistant Researcher/PhD Student at the Tinbergen Institute and the Department of Computer Science of the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. I've worked with Prof. Arie de Bruin and Dr. Wim Pijls on modeling two-player search algorithms.
• November 1992 - April 1993
  Systems Analist, ICI Systems
  Worked at ICI Systems, Rozenburg, the Netherlands, as a decision support analist to improve a distributed marketing information system.
• August 1990 - June 1991
  Systems Analist
  Worked as a consultant designing management information and decision support systems.
• January 1988 - February 1991
  Research Assistant, Technical University Delft
  Research Assistant at OTB, a research institute for policy analysis at the Technical University of Delft, the Netherlands. Amongst others, I worked on simulation models for housing markets.

Education

• PhD June 1996, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands
  Thesis subject: Two-agent heuristic search techniques
  Advisors:
  1994-1995 Prof. Jonathan Schaeffer (University of Alberta, Canada)
  1993-1994 Prof. Arie de Bruin and Dr. Wim Pijls (Erasmus University)
• MSc May 1993, Erasmus University Rotterdam
  Thesis subject: Application development for distributed systems - Transparency of remote procedure calls
  Advisor: Dr. Jan van den Berg

Prizes and Awards

• 1997: NWO/SION Postdoc.
• 1997: Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Postdoctoral Fellowship.
• 1996: Novag Award for the best computer chess publication of 1994-1995, awarded by the ICCA, for the report A New Paradigm for Minimax Search (co-authored with Jonathan Schaeffer, Arie de Bruin, and Wim Pijls).
• 1996: Using our (Novag) award winning search algorithm, our group at MIT has developed a parallel chess program Cilkchess which won first prize in the 1996 Open Dutch Computer Chess Championship.

Research Interests

• Optimization Algorithms
• Parallel Algorithms
• Distributed Systems
• Languages

Publications

• Aske Plaat, Jonathan Schaeffer, Wim Pijls, and Arie de Bruin:
  Best-First Fixed-Depth Minimax Algorithms,
  in Artificial Intelligence, Volume 87, issue 1-2, pages 255-293, November 1996. Abstract
• Aske Plaat, Jonathan Schaeffer, Wim Pijls, and Arie de Bruin:
  Exploiting Graph Properties of Game Trees
  In: Proceedings of the 13th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI'96), August 4-8, 1996, Portland, Oregon. Volume 1, pages 234-239.
• Aske Plaat
  Research Re: search & Re-search,
  PhD Thesis, Tinbergen Institute and Department of Computer Science, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Thesis Publishers, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, June 20, 1996. Abstract
• Aske Plaat, Jonathan Schaeffer, Wim Pijls, and Arie de Bruin:
  Best-First Fixed-Depth Game-Tree Search in Practice,
  In Fourteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IJCAI'95, Montreal, Canada, volume 1, pages 273-279, August 1995,
• Jonathan Schaeffer and Aske Plaat:
  New Advances in Alpha-Beta Searching,
  In Proceedings of the 24th ACM Computer Science Conference, February 16-18, 1996, pp. 124-130.
• Aske Plaat, Jonathan Schaeffer, Wim Pijls, and Arie de Bruin:
  Best-First and Depth-First Minimax Search in Practice,
  In Proceedings of Computing Science in the Netherlands 1995, Utrecht, the Netherlands, November 27-28, 1995, pages 182-193,
• Aske Plaat, Jonathan Schaeffer, Wim Pijls, and Arie de Bruin:
  An Algorithm Faster than NegaScout and SSS* in Practice,
  at the Computer Strategy Game Programming Workshop at the World Computer Chess Campionship, May 26, 1995, Hong Kong,
• Arie de Bruin, Wim Pijls, and Aske Plaat:
  Solution Trees as a Basis for Game Tree Search,
  ICCA Journal, volume 17, number 4, december 1994, pages 207-218.
• Aske Plaat, Jonathan Schaeffer, Wim Pijls, and Arie de Bruin:
  A Minimax Algorithm Better than Alpha-Beta? No and Yes,
  Technical Report 95-15, Department of Computing Science, University of Alberta, June 1995.
• Aske Plaat, Jonathan Schaeffer, Wim Pijls, and Arie de Bruin:
  SSS* = Alpha-Beta + TT,
  Technical Report 94-17, Department of Computing Science, University of Alberta, December 1994.
• Aske Plaat, Jonathan Schaeffer, Wim Pijls, and Arie de Bruin:
  A New Paradigm for Minimax Search,
  Technical Report 94-18, Department of Computing Science, University of Alberta, December 1994.
• Aske Plaat, Jonathan Schaeffer, Wim Pijls, and Arie de Bruin:
  Nearly Optimal Minimax Tree Search?,
  Technical Report 94-19, Department of Computing Science, University of Alberta, December 1994.
• Arie de Bruin, Wim Pijls, and Aske Plaat:
  Solution Trees as a Basis for Game Tree Search,
  Technical Report EUR-CS-94-04, Erasmus University Rotterdam, May 1994.

Presentations

• The Death of an AI Search Algorithm, Theory of Computation Seminar, MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, Cambridge, Massachusetts, October 24, 1996.
• SSS* versus Alpha-Beta, Symposium on Technologies for Intelligent Systems, on the occasion of the retirement of Prof. Laveen N. Kanal, by special invitation, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, October 11, 1996.
• Exploiting Graph Properties of Game Trees, AAAI'96, Portland, OR, August 5, 1996.
• New Advances in Alpha-Beta Searching, 24th ACM Computer Science Conference, Philadelphia, PA, February 16, 1996.
• Improvements in Minimax Search, invited talk, University of Paderborn, Germany, January 25, 1996.
• Best-First and Depth-First Search Strategies, invited talk, Free University Amsterdam, The Netherlands, January 8, 1996.
• Best-First and Depth-First Minimax Search in Practice, at Computing Science in the Netherlands 1995, Utrecht, The Netherlands, November 27, 1995.
• Best-First is Not Best; The Minimal Tree is Not Minimal, Dutch Game-Tree Day, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, November 3, 1995.
• Best-First Fixed-Depth Game-Tree Search in Practice, Fourteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-95), Montreal, Quebec, Canada, August 1995.
• An Algorithm Faster than NegaScout and SSS* in Practice, Computer Strategy Game Programming Workshop of the World Computer Chess Championship, Hong Kong, May 1995.
• SSS* as Null-Window Alpha-Beta Search, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, October 1994.
• SSS* - Lean and Mean, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, September 1994.
• SSS-2 and Friends, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, September 1994.
• SSS-2 and Friends, University of Limburg, Maastricht, June 1994.
• Game Tree Search, Free University Amsterdam, January 1994.