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Mikael Zayenz Lagerkvist

Welcome to my personal website. I am a researcher specializing in constraint programming, combinatorial optimization, and game tree search. My work explores efficient algorithms for solving complex decision problems, particularly in the context of board games and AI systems.

Feel free to explore my research page for a comprehensive list of my publications, or check out my blog for more informal discussions and insights into my work.

Recent Updates

  • Blog Post7 min read

    Gecode 6.3.0 and 6.4.0 are released

    After a long pause, there are two new Gecode releases. Gecode 6.3.0 is dated 7 July 2026, and Gecode 6.4.0 was released on 15 July 2026.

    Gecode logo
  • Blog Post4 min read

    Propagating the minimum distance between selected points

    Writing a custom propagator is worth considering when one constraint carries much of a problem's structure. My paper Propagation Algorithms for the Minimum-Distance Constraint over Selected Points, to be presented at ModRef 2026, works through one such case in Gecode.

    Eight candidate sites with five selected sites connected by their closest distances
  • Blog Post4 min read

    Table Talk Tuning

    We needed to arrange the tables for a real wedding. That practical problem became the MiniZinc model in No More Awkward Silences with Table Talk Tuning, a paper by Martin Butler and me to be presented at ModRef 2026.

    Supported conversation topics and their scores for a table of wedding guests
  • Blog Post3 min read

    What happens when Sudoku scales?

    There is now a public collection of 434,201 generated Sudoku instances, ranging from 6×6 to 36×36. The paper describes how the collection was generated, and its experiments provide a map for navigating it.

    Propagation-based Sudoku hardness categories from 6×6 through 36×36
  • Forthcoming research paper

    No More Awkward Silences with Table Talk Tuning

    A MiniZinc model of a real wedding seating problem that includes supported conversation topics alongside capacities and grouping requests. Experiments compare the full objective with a structural-only variant and several ways to handle its priorities.

    Authors
    Martin Butler, Mikael Z. Lagerkvist
    Venue
    The 25th International Workshop on Constraint Modelling and Reformulation (ModRef 2026), held at CP 2026 in Lisbon, Portugal
    Upper half of the first page of the Table Talk Tuning paper
  • Forthcoming research paper

    Propagation Algorithms for the Minimum-Distance Constraint over Selected Points

    Direct Gecode propagators replace the usual quadratic decomposition for the minimum-distance constraint. The comparison covers pairwise and global variants, advisor-backed propagation, and a matching-based upper bound.

    Author
    Mikael Z. Lagerkvist
    Venue
    The 25th International Workshop on Constraint Modelling and Reformulation (ModRef 2026), held at CP 2026 in Lisbon, Portugal
    Upper half of the first page of the minimum-distance propagation paper
  • Forthcoming research paper

    Scaling Sudoku as a Constraint Problem

    A benchmark study of Sudoku from 6×6 through 36×36, accompanied by 434,201 generated instances. The results show how propagation-based hardness categories shift as the grid grows.

    Author
    Mikael Z. Lagerkvist
    Venue
    The 25th International Workshop on Constraint Modelling and Reformulation (ModRef 2026), held at CP 2026 in Lisbon, Portugal
    Upper half of the first page of the Scaling Sudoku paper

Skills & Expertise

Research Areas

  • Constraint Programming
  • Combinatorial Optimization
  • Game Tree Search
  • Board Game AI
  • Machine Learning Applications

Technical Skills

  • Algorithm Design & Analysis
  • Optimization and scheduling
  • Python, C++, Java, TypeScript
  • Large Language Models and Neural Network Architectures
  • Software Engineering

Contact

Feel free to reach out to me at fromweb@zayenz.se

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