Louis Victor Allis is a Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 computer scientist

Computer scientist

A computer scientist is a scientist who has acquired knowledge of computer science, the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their application in computer systems....

 working in the artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

 (AI) field. In his graduate work, he revealed AI solutions for Connect Four

Connect Four

Connect Four is a two-player game in which the players first choose a color and then take turns dropping their colored discs from the top into a seven-column, six-row vertically-suspended grid...

, Qubic

Qubic

Qubic is the brand name of a four-in-a-row game played in a 4×4×4 matrix sold by Parker Brothers starting in 1953. The original box, and the 1972 reissue, described the game as "Parker Brothers 3D Tic Tac Toe Game." Players take turn placing pieces to get four in a row horizontally or...

, and Gomoku

Gomoku

Gomoku is an abstract strategy board game. Also called Gobang or Five in a Row, it is traditionally played with go pieces on a go board ; however, because once placed, pieces are not moved or removed from the board, gomoku may also be played as a paper and pencil game...

. His dissertation introduced two new game search techniques: proof-number search

Proof-number search

Proof-number search is a game tree search algorithm invented by Victor Allis, with applications mostly in endgame solvers, but also for sub-goals during games....

 and dependency-based search. Proof-number search has seen further successful application in computer Go

Computer Go

Computer Go is the field of artificial intelligence dedicated to creating a computer program that plays Go, a traditional board game.-Performance:...

 tactical search and many other games.

Credentials

Victor holds a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence from Maastricht University, The Netherlands, and graduated cum laude with a M. Sc. in Computer Science from the Vrije Universiteit, The Netherlands. He has more than 30 publications to his name; the majority of his published work reports on research in search technologies.

Career

Victor started his career in 1987 as a freelance teacher, course developer and mentor of various AMBI courses for NOVI. Victor has lectured at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam as an Assistant Professor in Artificial Intelligence. In 1995 he joined Bolesian (a knowledge technology firm in the Netherlands which is a daughter company of Capgemini and specialized in developing advanced systems based on Artificial Intelligence) as a senior consultant and manager. In 1997 he co-founded Quintiq and was appointed as the company’s CEO.

Currently

Victor remains the CEO of Quintiq, a Dutch software company that delivers solutions for planning, scheduling and workforce optimization in large complex business environments.

Since late 2010, Victor relocated to the Philadelphia office of Quintiq and he has a focus on the non-European Business Units. His prime responsibilities extend to product development and delivery. Victor remains a co-owner of Quintiq and together with Arjen Heeres, COO, forms the company’s Executive Management team.

External links

• Victor's home page (archived)
• Bolesian's web site
• Quintiq company site