The 2008 Classic Paper Award: Summary and Significance

We at the NASA laboratory believed that our best work came when we simultaneously advanced AI theory and provided immediately usable solutions for current NASA problems. "Solving Large-Scale Constraint Satisfaction and Scheduling Problems Using a Heuristic Repair Method," by Steve Minton, Mark Johnston, Andy Phillips, and Phil Laird clearly achieved both. It proved that local search and repair was applicable to a wide class of constraint satisfaction problems and clearly explicated the theory behind that proof.