Dr Joan Espasa Arxer

Lecturer

Researcher profile

Phone

+44 (0)1334 46 3270

Email

jea20@st-andrews.ac.uk

 

Teaching

• CS4402 - Constraint Programming
• CS4303 - Videogames

I also supervise projects at a variety of levels across our school.

Research areas

I am a Lecturer in the AI group. My main research focus lies in Automated Planning, which is a central discipline of Artificial Intelligence. This area studies decision-making in a given environment to reach or optimise a goal. These problems are ubiquitous in industry and science, where they appear in logistics, chemistry or even network security, just to name a few. More concretely, my published work mainly lies in the intersection of Automated Planning, Constraint Satisfaction, Reformulation and applications of logic in computer science.

PhD supervision

• Mustafa Abdelwahed
• Carla Davesa Sureda
• Louis Mellac

Selected publications

• Open access

  From Stories to Cities to Games: A Qualitative Evaluation of Behaviour Planning

  Abdelwahed, M. F., Espasa Arxer, J., Toniolo, A. & Gent, I. P., 8 Jan 2026, PlanSig.

  Research output: Working paper › Preprint

• Removing Planner Bias in Goal Recognition Through Multi-Plan Dataset Generation

  Abdelwahed, M. F. Z., Espasa Arxer, J., Meneguzzi, F. & Max Piamolini Gusmão, K., 8 Jan 2026, UK PlanSig 2026. PlanSig

  Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

• Open access

  Cross-paradigm modelling: a study of Puzznic

  Espasa, J., Gent, I. P., Miguel, I., Nightingale, P., Salamon, A. Z. & Villaret, M., 28 Jan 2025, Proceedings - 2024 IEEE 36th international conference on tools with artificial intelligence (ICTAI 2024). Piscataway, NJ: IEEE Computer Society, p. 89-95 7 p. 10849509. (Proceedings - International conference on tools with artificial intelligence (ICTAI)).

  Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

• Open access

  Plotting: a case study in lifted planning with constraints

  Espasa, J., Miguel, I. J., Nightingale, P., Salamon, A. Z. & Villaret, M., 13 Sept 2024, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Constraints. First online, 40 p.

  Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

• Open access

  The 2023 International Planning Competition

  Taitler, A., Alford, R., Espasa, J., Behnke, G., Fišer, D., Gimelfarb, M., Pommerening, F., Sanner, S., Scala, E., Schreiber, D., Segovia‐Aguas, J. & Seipp, J., 18 Jun 2024, In: AI Magazine. 45, 2, p. 280-296 17 p.

  Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

• Open access

  Towards high-level modelling in automated planning

  Sureda, C. D., Arxer, J. E., Miguel, I. & Auselle, M. V., 2 Sept 2024, ModRef 2024 - the 23rd workshop on constraint modelling and reformulation (ModRef). 17 p.

  Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

• Towards understanding differences between modelling pipelines: a modelers perspective

  Balogh, C., Hoffmann, R. & Espasa Arxer, J., 2 Sept 2024, p. 1-9. 9 p.

  Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper › peer-review

• Open access

  A good snowman is hard to plan

  Bofill, M., Borralleras, C., Espasa Arxer, J., Martín, G. & Patow, G., 9 Jul 2023. 9 p.

  Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper › peer-review

• Bridging the gap between structural and semantic similarity in diverse planning

  Abdelwahed, M., Espasa Arxer, J., Toniolo, A. & Gent, I. P., 10 Jul 2023. 7 p.

  Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper › peer-review

• Open access

  Challenges in modelling and solving plotting with PDDL

  Espasa Arxer, J., Miguel, I. J., Nightingale, P., Salamon, A. Z. & Villaret, M., 9 Jul 2023.

  Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper › peer-review

 

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