Anna Karlin Colloquium tomorrow
David Kempe
my apologies for the late announcement.
Tomorrow (Thursday, 03/05/2009), Anna Karlin from the University of
Washington will give a Distinguished Lecture in our CS Colloquium
series. All the important information is below.
Speaker: Prof. Anna Karlin, University of Washington
Title: A Survey of Some Recent Research at the Border of Game Theory,
Algorithms, and Economics
Time: 4:00 PM
Date: Thursday, 03/05/2009
Location: SSL 150
Abstract:
The design of protocols for resource allocation and electronic
commerce among parties with diverse and selfish interests has spawned
a great deal of recent research at the boundary between economics,
game theory and computer science.
In the process, completely new areas of research have emerged such as
computational economics. We need to understand the complexity of
computing various equilibria. New notions such as the "price of
anarchy" arise in an attempt to quantify the efficiency lost due to
selfish behavior in natural games. Finally, there is "mechanism
design", a fascinating subfield of game theory and microeconomics,
focusing on "incentive engineering". A mechanism is an algorithm or
protocol that is explicitly designed so that rational participants,
motivated solely by their self-interest, will end up achieving the
designer's goals.
In this talk, we survey some of the research and open problems in
these areas. (No background in game theory will be assumed.)
Biography:
Anna Karlin is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the
University of Washington. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford
University and then spent 5 years as a researcher at (what was then)
Digital Equipment Corporation's Systems Research Center before coming
to the University of Washington. Her professional activities have
included serving on the National Research Council's Computer Science
and Telecommunications Board, the editorial board for SIAM Journal on
Computing, the committee to award the ACM Paris Kanellakis Theory and
Practice Award (including chairing that committee in 2006), and
serving as Program Chair for the 1997 IEEE Symposium on Foundations of
Computer Science. She has given a number of Distinguished Lectures at
major universities including among others MIT, Brown, Penn and Duke.
Her research is primarily in theoretical computer science: the design
and analysis of algorithms, particularly probabilistic and online
algorithms. Much of her work is also at the interface between theory
and other areas, such as economics and game theory, data mining,
operating systems, networks, and distributed systems.
Outside of work, her main claim to fame is having formerly been part
of "an obscure and very bad rock band of furry Palo Alto geeks"
(according to the Rolling Stones) called Severe Tire Damage (or STD
for short). STD was the first band to broadcast live over the Internet
(back in 1993).
--
David Kempe <dke...@usc.edu>