Dr. Eric Piette

Biography

Eric Piette is an Assistant Professor at Université catholique de Louvain, affiliated with the Information Communication Technologies, Electronics Applied Mathematics (ICTEAM) institute and the Computing Science Engineering (INGI) department. His primary research focuses on Game Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications, with specialized areas including Machine Learning (ML), Explainable AI (XAI), and Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSP) as well as Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KRR) within the context of General Game Playing (GGP). He is the main proposer of the Chair GameTable COST Action CA22145, which aims to establish an international interdisciplinary network of scholars and stakeholders across various career stages in academia, industry, and heritage institutions. This initiative inspires methodologies and applications that utilize game AI to study, reconstruct, and preserve the intangible cultural heritage of games. Previously, he was part of the Digital Ludeme Project, a five-year ERC-funded project that provided a computational study of traditional strategy games documented in human history, exploring their role in the spread of mathematical ideas. His Ph.D. thesis, titled "Stochastic Constraint-Based Approach to General Game Playing," introduced a new methodology based on stochastic constraint satisfaction problems, demonstrating the equivalence of detected constraint and solution symmetries within the constraint network created by the structural and strategic symmetries of GGP games. His contributions have been implemented in the general game player called WoodStock, which won the International General Game Playing Competition 2016 (IGGPC'16) organized by Stanford University.

Research Interests