From dhouston at cs.cmu.edu Tue Apr 16 08:37:33 2013 From: dhouston at cs.cmu.edu (Dana Houston) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2013 08:37:33 -0400 Subject: [Intelligence Seminar] Algorithmic economics seminar: Tuomas Sandholm, April 16 @ noon, NSH 1507 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <516D460D.9010600@cs.cmu.edu> Hi everyone, Our very own Tuomas Sandholm will give a talk on Tuesday April 16 at noon in NSH 1507 (note the unusual location -- this is not the "usual unusual" location in NSH!). The title of the talk is "Modern Dynamic Kidney Exchanges". You can find the talk details (including abstract) on the seminar's website: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~arielpro/algecon.html. As usual, lunch from Aladdin will be served. Best, Ariel -- Dana M. Houston Language Technologies Institute School of Computer Science Carnegie Mellon University 6511 Gates Hillman Complex 5000 Forbes Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15213 T: (412)268-4717 F: (412)268-6298 From dhouston at cs.cmu.edu Wed Apr 17 15:23:07 2013 From: dhouston at cs.cmu.edu (Dana Houston) Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2013 15:23:07 -0400 Subject: [Intelligence Seminar] April 23, 3:30pm: , Presentation by Sasa Pekec Message-ID: <516EF69B.7050801@cs.cmu.edu> INTELLIGENCE SEMINAR APRIL 23 AT 3:30PM, IN GHC 4405 SPEAKER: SASA PEKEC (Duke University) Host: Tuomas Sandholm For meetings, contact Charlotte Yano (yano at cs.cmu.edu ) OPTIMAL PRICING MECHANISMS WHEN EXCLUSIVITY IS VALUABLE Multiple identical items are being sold to unit-demand buyers in a network. Buyers are willing to pay a premium if they obtain the item exclusively in their neighborhood, i.e., if no neighbor obtains the item. Each buyer has a private value for the item, as well as a private value for obtaining the item exclusively among neighbors. The seller limited to offering posted prices should inflate the price in order to maximize revenues and capture the value buyers put on the allocative externalities. However, we show that these posted price mechanisms are suboptimal by solving the revenue maximizing mechanism design problem for several special information structures. We show that this mechanism design problem could be computationally hard even when the corresponding perfect information problem is trivial to solve. Furthermore, optimal seller revenues are non-monotonic in buyers' valuations because information rents that buyers capture depend not just on the private values, but also on the underlying network topology. Finally, we present an ascending auction implementation of the optimal mechanism on the complete graph with private values that admit a generic one-dimensional representation. Our results provide insights on when and where exclusive allocations should be considered, and how to price exclusivity. BIO Sasa Pekec is an Associate Professor in the Decision Sciences Area at the Fuqua School of Business. He holds a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Rutgers University. He joined Duke in 1998 and is currently teaching the core statistics course in the daytime MBA and the Cross Continent MBA programs. Professor Pekec research is interdisciplinary and revolves around decision-making in complex competitive environments, and includes work on multiple object auction design, subset choice and bundle valuations, preference elicitation, and information aggregation. He has published articles in Management Science and Operations Research, as well as in top academic journals in other fields such as economics, mathematics, and psychology. His work on combinatorial auctions had been widely cited and had influenced design of a new generation of now standard procurement auction procedures in a variety of industries. Professor Pekec's consulting experience includes banking, internet, pharmaceutical, retail, and telecommunications industries. He serves on the Supervisory Board of Atlantic Grupa, one of the leading FMCG companies in SE Europe. Professor Pekec is a member of the Council of Economic Advisors to the President of Croatia. -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dhouston at cs.cmu.edu Mon Apr 22 13:15:33 2013 From: dhouston at cs.cmu.edu (Dana Houston) Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2013 13:15:33 -0400 Subject: [Intelligence Seminar] April 23, 3:30pm: , Presentation by Sasa Pekec In-Reply-To: <516EF69B.7050801@cs.cmu.edu> References: <516EF69B.7050801@cs.cmu.edu> Message-ID: <51757035.1020404@cs.cmu.edu> > INTELLIGENCE SEMINAR > APRIL 23 AT 3:30PM, IN GHC 4405 > > SPEAKER: SASA PEKEC (Duke University) > Host: Tuomas Sandholm > For meetings, contact Charlotte Yano (yano at cs.cmu.edu > ) > > OPTIMAL PRICING MECHANISMS WHEN EXCLUSIVITY IS VALUABLE > > Multiple identical items are being sold to unit-demand buyers in a > network. Buyers are willing to pay a premium if they obtain the item > exclusively in their neighborhood, i.e., if no neighbor obtains the > item. Each buyer has a private value for the item, as well as a > private value for obtaining the item exclusively among neighbors. The > seller limited to offering posted prices should inflate the price in > order to maximize revenues and capture the value buyers put on the > allocative externalities. However, we show that these posted price > mechanisms are suboptimal by solving the revenue maximizing mechanism > design problem for several special information structures. We show > that this mechanism design problem could be computationally hard even > when the corresponding perfect information problem is trivial to > solve. Furthermore, optimal seller revenues are non-monotonic in > buyers' valuations because information rents that buyers capture > depend not just on the private values, but also on the underlying > network topology. Finally, we present an ascending auction > implementation of the optimal mechanism on the complete graph with > private values that admit a generic one-dimensional representation. > Our results provide insights on when and where exclusive allocations > should be considered, and how to price exclusivity. > > BIO > > Sasa Pekec is an Associate Professor in the Decision Sciences Area at > the Fuqua School of Business. He holds a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics > from Rutgers University. He joined Duke in 1998 and is currently > teaching the core statistics course in the daytime MBA and the Cross > Continent MBA programs. Professor Pekec research is interdisciplinary > and revolves around decision-making in complex competitive > environments, and includes work on multiple object auction design, > subset choice and bundle valuations, preference elicitation, and > information aggregation. He has published articles in Management > Science and Operations Research, as well as in top academic journals > in other fields such as economics, mathematics, and psychology. > His work on combinatorial auctions had been widely cited and had > influenced design of a new generation of now standard procurement > auction procedures in a variety of industries. Professor Pekec's > consulting experience includes banking, internet, pharmaceutical, > retail, and telecommunications industries. He serves on the > Supervisory Board of Atlantic Grupa, one of the leading FMCG companies > in SE Europe. Professor Pekec is a member of the Council of Economic > Advisors to the President of Croatia. > -- -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dhouston at cs.cmu.edu Tue Apr 23 08:58:40 2013 From: dhouston at cs.cmu.edu (Dana Houston) Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2013 08:58:40 -0400 Subject: [Intelligence Seminar] April 30, 3:30pm: , Presentation by Matthew Ginsberg In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <51768580.7010401@cs.cmu.edu> ========================================================= WE HAVE TWO INTELLIGENCE SEMINAR PRESENTATIONS NEXT WEEK: MATTHEW GINSBERG: APRIL 30, 3:30PM, IN GHC 6115 RONEN FELDMAN: MAY 1, 2:00PM, IN GHC 4405 THE ANNOUNCEMENT BELOW IS FOR THE FIRST PRESENTATION ========================================================= INTELLIGENCE SEMINAR APRIL 30 AT 3:30PM, IN GHC 6115 SPEAKER: MATTHEW GINSBERG (On Time Systems) Host: Stephen Smith For meetings, contact Marliese Bonk (marliese at cs.cmu.edu ) DR.FILL: CROSSWORDS AND AN IMPLEMENTED SOLVER FOR SINGLY WEIGHTED CSPS We describe and demonstrate Dr.Fill, a program that solves American-style crossword puzzles. From a technical perspective, Dr.Fill works by converting crosswords to weighted CSPs, and then using a variety of novel techniques to find a solution. These techniques include generally applicable heuristics for variable and value selection, a variant of limited discrepancy search, and postprocessing ideas. Branch and bound is not used, as it was incompatible with postprocessing and was determined experimentally to be of little practical value. Dr.Fill's performance on crosswords from the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament suggests that it ranks among the top hundred or so crossword solvers in the world. BIO Matthew L. Ginsberg received his doctorate in mathematics from Oxford in 1980 at the age of 24. He remained on the faculty in Oxford until 1983, doing research in mathematical physics and computer science; during this period, he wrote a program that was used successfully to trade stock and stock options on Wall Street. Ginsberg's continuing interest in artificial intelligence brought him to Stanford in late 1983, where he remained for nine years. He then went on to found CIRL, the computational intelligence research laboratory at the University of Oregon, which he directed until 1996. He remained at CIRL until 1998, when CIRL spun off On Time Systems, a commercial entity focusing on scheduling and routing technology. Ginsberg has been the CEO of the company since its formation and is currently its chairman as well. Ginsberg is also the chairman and CEO of Green Driver, Inc., a sister company to On Time Systems that focuses on using real-time traffic and signal information to improve driver safety, fuel efficiency, and the driving experience generally. Ginsberg's present research interests focus on constraint satisfaction. He is the author of numerous publications in this area, the editor of "Readings in Nonmonotonic Reasoning," and the author of "Essentials of Artificial Intelligence," both published by Morgan Kaufmann. He is also the author of the bridge-playing program GIB, which made international news by finishing 12th in the world bridge championships in Lille, France, and the author of Dr.Fill, a crossword-solving program that made national news by participating in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in March of 2012. -- Dana M. Houston Language Technologies Institute School of Computer Science Carnegie Mellon University 6511 Gates Hillman Complex 5000 Forbes Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15213 T: (412)268-4717 F: (412)268-6298 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dhouston at cs.cmu.edu Tue Apr 23 08:59:17 2013 From: dhouston at cs.cmu.edu (Dana Houston) Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2013 08:59:17 -0400 Subject: [Intelligence Seminar] May 1, 2:00pm: , Presentation by Ronen Feldman In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <517685A5.7070402@cs.cmu.edu> ========================================================= WE HAVE TWO INTELLIGENCE SEMINAR PRESENTATIONS NEXT WEEK: MATTHEW GINSBERG: APRIL 30, 3:30PM, IN GHC 6115 RONEN FELDMAN: MAY 1, 2:00PM, IN GHC 4405 THE ANNOUNCEMENT BELOW IS FOR THE SECOND PRESENTATION ========================================================= INTELLIGENCE SEMINAR MAY 1 AT 2:00PM, IN GHC 4405 (UNUSUAL DAY AND TIME) SPEAKER: RONEN FELDMAN (Hebrew University in Jerusalem) Host: Noah Smith For meetings, contact Noah Smith (nasmith at cs.cmu.edu ) AN UNSUPERVISED FRAMEWORK FOR INFORMATION EXTRACTION I will describe a framework for relation learning and building of domain-specific relation extraction systems (Visual Care). I will demonstrate several applications of the framework in the domains of mining public medical forums and financial news and blogs. The case studies demonstrate the ability of the system to achieve high accuracy of relation identification and extraction with minimal human supervision. I will also describe and demonstrate the performance of VC's modifier learning mechanism and coreference resolution. BIO Ronen Feldman is an Associate Professor of Information Systems at the Business School of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He received his B.Sc. in Math, Physics, and Computer Science from the Hebrew University and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell University in NY. He is now on sabbatical at NYU Stern Business School. He is the founder of ClearForest Corporation, a Boston-based company specializing in development of text mining tools and applications. He has given more than 30 tutorials on text mining and information extraction, and authored numerous papers on these topics. He is the author of the book "The Text Mining Handbook" published by Cambridge University Press in 2007. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dhouston at cs.cmu.edu Tue Apr 23 10:52:03 2013 From: dhouston at cs.cmu.edu (Dana Houston) Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2013 10:52:03 -0400 Subject: [Intelligence Seminar] May 1, 2:00pm: , Presentation by Ronen Feldman In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5176A013.2040002@cs.cmu.edu> If you are interested in a meeting with Ronen Feldman on April 30 or May 1, please sign up here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nIDZ0qS5koRuCLVMuQidruCeJh1Ly3K5DdtwRThZvnE/edit?usp=sharing Thanks, Noah On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 8:59 AM, Dana Houston > wrote: ========================================================= WE HAVE TWO INTELLIGENCE SEMINAR PRESENTATIONS NEXT WEEK: MATTHEW GINSBERG: APRIL 30, 3:30PM, IN GHC 6115 RONEN FELDMAN: MAY 1, 2:00PM, IN GHC 4405 THE ANNOUNCEMENT BELOW IS FOR THE SECOND PRESENTATION ========================================================= INTELLIGENCE SEMINAR MAY 1 AT 2:00PM, IN GHC 4405 (UNUSUAL DAY AND TIME) SPEAKER: RONEN FELDMAN (Hebrew University in Jerusalem) Host: Noah Smith For meetings, contact Noah Smith (nasmith at cs.cmu.edu ) AN UNSUPERVISED FRAMEWORK FOR INFORMATION EXTRACTION I will describe a framework for relation learning and building of domain-specific relation extraction systems (Visual Care). I will demonstrate several applications of the framework in the domains of mining public medical forums and financial news and blogs. The case studies demonstrate the ability of the system to achieve high accuracy of relation identification and extraction with minimal human supervision. I will also describe and demonstrate the performance of VC's modifier learning mechanism and coreference resolution. BIO Ronen Feldman is an Associate Professor of Information Systems at the Business School of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He received his B.Sc. in Math, Physics, and Computer Science from the Hebrew University and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell University in NY. He is now on sabbatical at NYU Stern Business School. He is the founder of ClearForest Corporation, a Boston-based company specializing in development of text mining tools and applications. He has given more than 30 tutorials on text mining and information extraction, and authored numerous papers on these topics. He is the author of the book "The Text Mining Handbook" published by Cambridge University Press in 2007. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dhouston at cs.cmu.edu Fri Apr 26 10:02:06 2013 From: dhouston at cs.cmu.edu (Dana Houston) Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:02:06 -0400 Subject: [Intelligence Seminar] Algorithmic economics seminar: Craig Boutilier, April 30 @ noon, NSH 3305 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <517A88DE.4030104@cs.cmu.edu> Hi everyone, *Craig Boutilier*, Prof. of CS at the University of Toronto, will give a talk on*Tuesday April 30 at noon in NSH 3305*, entitled "Preference Elicitation for Social Choice: A Study in Voting and Stable Matching". Craig's fresh approach to social choice is often inspired by machine learning paradigms and in this sense the talk ties in nicely with the ML&social sciences theme. You can find the talk details (including abstract) on the seminar's website: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~arielpro/algecon.html . As usual, lunch from Aladdin will be served. *Craig will be available on April 30 for meetings. If you would like to meet him, please send your constraints to Pat Loring (cc'd) at sawako at cs.cmu.edu .* Best regards, Ariel arielpro at cs.cmu.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dhouston at cs.cmu.edu Mon Apr 29 08:41:00 2013 From: dhouston at cs.cmu.edu (Dana Houston) Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2013 08:41:00 -0400 Subject: [Intelligence Seminar] May 1, 2:00pm: , Presentation by Ronen Feldman In-Reply-To: <517685A5.7070402@cs.cmu.edu> References: <517685A5.7070402@cs.cmu.edu> Message-ID: <517E6A5C.6010103@cs.cmu.edu> > ========================================================= > WE HAVE TWO INTELLIGENCE SEMINAR PRESENTATIONS NEXT WEEK: > MATTHEW GINSBERG: APRIL 30, 3:30PM, IN GHC 6115 > RONEN FELDMAN: MAY 1, 2:00PM, IN GHC 4405 > THE ANNOUNCEMENT BELOW IS FOR THE SECOND PRESENTATION > ========================================================= > > INTELLIGENCE SEMINAR > MAY 1 AT 2:00PM, IN GHC 4405 > (UNUSUAL DAY AND TIME) > > SPEAKER: RONEN FELDMAN (Hebrew University in Jerusalem) > Host: Noah Smith > For meetings, contact Noah Smith (nasmith at cs.cmu.edu > ) > > AN UNSUPERVISED FRAMEWORK FOR INFORMATION EXTRACTION > > I will describe a framework for relation learning and building of > domain-specific relation extraction systems (Visual Care). I will > demonstrate several applications of the framework in the domains of > mining public medical forums and financial news and blogs. The case > studies demonstrate the ability of the system to achieve high accuracy > of relation identification and extraction with minimal human > supervision. I will also describe and demonstrate the performance of > VC's modifier learning mechanism and coreference resolution. > > BIO > > Ronen Feldman is an Associate Professor of Information Systems at the > Business School of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He received his > B.Sc. in Math, Physics, and Computer Science from the Hebrew > University and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell University > in NY. He is now on sabbatical at NYU Stern Business School. He is the > founder of ClearForest Corporation, a Boston-based company > specializing in development of text mining tools and applications. He > has given more than 30 tutorials on text mining and information > extraction, and authored numerous papers on these topics. He is the > author of the book "The Text Mining Handbook" published by Cambridge > University Press in 2007. > > > > -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dhouston at cs.cmu.edu Mon Apr 29 08:41:14 2013 From: dhouston at cs.cmu.edu (Dana Houston) Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2013 08:41:14 -0400 Subject: [Intelligence Seminar] April 30, 3:30pm: , Presentation by Matthew Ginsberg In-Reply-To: <51768580.7010401@cs.cmu.edu> References: <51768580.7010401@cs.cmu.edu> Message-ID: <517E6A6A.2060203@cs.cmu.edu> > > ========================================================= > WE HAVE TWO INTELLIGENCE SEMINAR PRESENTATIONS NEXT WEEK: > MATTHEW GINSBERG: APRIL 30, 3:30PM, IN GHC 6115 > RONEN FELDMAN: MAY 1, 2:00PM, IN GHC 4405 > THE ANNOUNCEMENT BELOW IS FOR THE FIRST PRESENTATION > ========================================================= > > INTELLIGENCE SEMINAR > APRIL 30 AT 3:30PM, IN GHC 6115 > > SPEAKER: MATTHEW GINSBERG (On Time Systems) > Host: Stephen Smith > For meetings, contact Marliese Bonk (marliese at cs.cmu.edu > ) > > DR.FILL: CROSSWORDS AND AN IMPLEMENTED SOLVER FOR SINGLY WEIGHTED CSPS > > We describe and demonstrate Dr.Fill, a program that solves > American-style crossword puzzles. From a technical perspective, > Dr.Fill works by converting crosswords to weighted CSPs, and then > using a variety of novel techniques to find a solution. These > techniques include generally applicable heuristics for variable and > value selection, a variant of limited discrepancy search, and > postprocessing ideas. Branch and bound is not used, as it was > incompatible with postprocessing and was determined experimentally to > be of little practical value. Dr.Fill's performance on crosswords > from the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament suggests that it ranks > among the top hundred or so crossword solvers in the world. > > BIO > > Matthew L. Ginsberg received his doctorate in mathematics from Oxford > in 1980 at the age of 24. He remained on the faculty in Oxford until > 1983, doing research in mathematical physics and computer science; > during this period, he wrote a program that was used successfully to > trade stock and stock options on Wall Street. > > Ginsberg's continuing interest in artificial intelligence brought him > to Stanford in late 1983, where he remained for nine years. He then > went on to found CIRL, the computational intelligence research > laboratory at the University of Oregon, which he directed until > 1996. He remained at CIRL until 1998, when CIRL spun off On Time > Systems, a commercial entity focusing on scheduling and routing > technology. Ginsberg has been the CEO of the company since its > formation and is currently its chairman as well. > > Ginsberg is also the chairman and CEO of Green Driver, Inc., a sister > company to On Time Systems that focuses on using real-time traffic and > signal information to improve driver safety, fuel efficiency, and the > driving experience generally. > > Ginsberg's present research interests focus on constraint > satisfaction. He is the author of numerous publications in this area, > the editor of "Readings in Nonmonotonic Reasoning," and the author of > "Essentials of Artificial Intelligence," both published by Morgan > Kaufmann. He is also the author of the bridge-playing program GIB, > which made international news by finishing 12th in the world bridge > championships in Lille, France, and the author of Dr.Fill, a > crossword-solving program that made national news by participating in > the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in March of 2012. > > > -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mmv at cs.cmu.edu Wed Jul 10 18:48:44 2013 From: mmv at cs.cmu.edu (Manuela Veloso) Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2013 18:48:44 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Intelligence Seminar] Special Intelligence/Robotics seminar FRIDAY July 12 Message-ID: <54274.128.237.126.101.1373496524.squirrel@webmail-beta.cs.cmu.edu> TITLE: Cognitive Control for Mobile Service Robots SPEAKER: Nick Hawes, School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~nah WHERE: GHC 7101, 3-4pm, Friday, July 12 REFRESHMENTS will be served. Appointments available for Friday - please contact host Manuela Veloso, mmv at cs.cmu.edu Cognitive Control for Mobile Service Robots The technology underlying mobile robots has matured to the level where basic operations in static, or controlled, environments can almost be taken for granted. To make mobile robots useful as service platforms (i.e. performing tasks with or for humans in everyday environments), we now must develop approaches that exploit the structure of human environments (both static and dynamic) in order to create more intelligent, and therefore more useful, robots. With this aim in mind, this talk will present recent work on the application of a range of AI techniques to mobile robotics, including probabilistic reasoning for object search, goal generation and planning for exploration, qualitative reasoning about human environments, and learning the best routes to take through populated spaces. -- Manuela M. Veloso Herbert A. Simon Professor Computer Science Department Carnegie Mellon University www.cs.cmu.edu/~mmv -- Manuela M. Veloso Herbert A. Simon Professor Computer Science Department Carnegie Mellon University www.cs.cmu.edu/~mmv From dhouston at cs.cmu.edu Tue Sep 3 09:00:15 2013 From: dhouston at cs.cmu.edu (Dana Houston) Date: Tue, 03 Sep 2013 09:00:15 -0400 Subject: [Intelligence Seminar] September 9, 12:00 noon: , Presentation by Vince Conitzer Message-ID: <5225DD5F.6090102@cs.cmu.edu> INTELLIGENCE SEMINAR SEPTEMBER 9 AT 12:00 NOON, IN GCH 6501 (UNUSUAL DAY AND TIME) SPEAKER: VINCE CONITZER (Duke University) Host: Tuomas Sandholm For meetings, contact Charlotte Yano (yano at cs.cmu.edu ) TEARING DOWN THE WALL BETWEEN MECHANISM DESIGN WITH AND WITHOUT MONEY Many mechanism designers (algorithmic or other) draw a sharp line between mechanism design with money (auctions, exchanges, ...) and without money (social choice, matching, ...). I will discuss two papers that indicate that this line is blurrier than it seems. In the first, we study generalizations of the Vickrey auction to settings where a single agent wins, but with an arbitrary contract instead of a simple payment. In the second, we study repeated allocation of a good without payments. Here, we can create a type of artificial currency that affects future assignment of the good and that allows us to use modified versions of existing mechanisms with payments. Based on: B. Paul Harrenstein, Mathijs M. de Weerdt, and Vincent Conitzer. Strategy-Proof Contract Auctions and the Role of Ties. To appear in Games and Economic Behavior. Mingyu Guo, Vincent Conitzer, and Daniel Reeves. Competitive Repeated Allocation Without Payments. Short version appeared in Proceedings of the Fifth Workshop on Internet and Network Economics (WINE-09), pp. 244-255, Rome, Italy, 2009. BIO Vincent Conitzer is the Sally Dalton Robinson Professor of Computer Science and Professor of Economics at Duke University. He received Ph.D. (2006) and M.S. (2003) degrees in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, and an A.B. (2001) degree in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University. His research focuses on computational aspects of microeconomics, in particular game theory, mechanism design, voting/social choice, and auctions. This work uses techniques from, and includes applications to, artificial intelligence and multiagent systems. Conitzer has received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the IJCAI Computers and Thought Award, an NSF CAREER award, the inaugural Victor Lesser dissertation award, an honorable mention for the ACM dissertation award, and several awards for papers and service at the AAAI and AAMAS conferences. He has also been named a Kavli Fellow, a Bass Fellow, a Sloan Fellow, and one of AI's Ten to Watch. Conitzer and Preston McAfee are the founding Editors-in-Chief of the ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation (TEAC). -- Dana M. Houston Language Technologies Institute School of Computer Science Carnegie Mellon University 6511 Gates Hillman Complex 5000 Forbes Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15213 T: (412)268-4717 F: (412)268-6298 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dhouston at cs.cmu.edu Mon Sep 9 08:46:32 2013 From: dhouston at cs.cmu.edu (Dana Houston) Date: Mon, 09 Sep 2013 08:46:32 -0400 Subject: [Intelligence Seminar] September 9 (Today), 12:00 noon: , Presentation by Vince Conitzer Message-ID: <522DC328.7010900@cs.cmu.edu> INTELLIGENCE SEMINAR SEPTEMBER 9 (TODAY) AT 12:00 NOON, IN GCH 6501 SPEAKER: VINCE CONITZER (Duke University) Host: Tuomas Sandholm For meetings, contact Charlotte Yano (yano at cs.cmu.edu ) TEARING DOWN THE WALL BETWEEN MECHANISM DESIGN WITH AND WITHOUT MONEY Many mechanism designers (algorithmic or other) draw a sharp line between mechanism design with money (auctions, exchanges, ...) and without money (social choice, matching, ...). I will discuss two papers that indicate that this line is blurrier than it seems. In the first, we study generalizations of the Vickrey auction to settings where a single agent wins, but with an arbitrary contract instead of a simple payment. In the second, we study repeated allocation of a good without payments. Here, we can create a type of artificial currency that affects future assignment of the good and that allows us to use modified versions of existing mechanisms with payments. Based on: B. Paul Harrenstein, Mathijs M. de Weerdt, and Vincent Conitzer. Strategy-Proof Contract Auctions and the Role of Ties. To appear in Games and Economic Behavior. Mingyu Guo, Vincent Conitzer, and Daniel Reeves. Competitive Repeated Allocation Without Payments. Short version appeared in Proceedings of the Fifth Workshop on Internet and Network Economics (WINE-09), pp. 244-255, Rome, Italy, 2009. BIO Vincent Conitzer is the Sally Dalton Robinson Professor of Computer Science and Professor of Economics at Duke University. He received Ph.D. (2006) and M.S. (2003) degrees in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, and an A.B. (2001) degree in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University. His research focuses on computational aspects of microeconomics, in particular game theory, mechanism design, voting/social choice, and auctions. This work uses techniques from, and includes applications to, artificial intelligence and multiagent systems. Conitzer has received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the IJCAI Computers and Thought Award, an NSF CAREER award, the inaugural Victor Lesser dissertation award, an honorable mention for the ACM dissertation award, and several awards for papers and service at the AAAI and AAMAS conferences. He has also been named a Kavli Fellow, a Bass Fellow, a Sloan Fellow, and one of AI's Ten to Watch. Conitzer and Preston McAfee are the founding Editors-in-Chief of the ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation (TEAC). -- Dana M. Houston Language Technologies Institute School of Computer Science Carnegie Mellon University 6511 Gates Hillman Complex 5000 Forbes Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15213 T: (412)268-4717 F: (412)268-6298 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dhouston at cs.cmu.edu Tue Sep 10 10:13:25 2013 From: dhouston at cs.cmu.edu (Dana Houston) Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2013 10:13:25 -0400 Subject: [Intelligence Seminar] September 17, 12:00 noon: , Presentation by Joseph Halpern Message-ID: <522F2905.2030409@cs.cmu.edu> INTELLIGENCE SEMINAR SEPTEMBER 17 AT 12:00 NOON, IN GCH 6115 (UNUSUAL TIME) SPEAKER: JOSEPH HALPERN (Cornell University) Host: Ariel Procaccia For meetings, contact Pat Loring (sawako at cs.cmu.edu ) BEYOND NASH EQUILIBRIUM: SOLUTION CONCEPTS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY Nash equilibrium is the most commonly used notion of equilibrium in game theory. However, it suffers from numerous problems. Some are well known in the game theory community. For example, the Nash equilibrium of repeated prisoner's dilemma is neither normatively nor descriptively reasonable. However, new problems arise when considering Nash equilibrium from a computer science perspective. For example, Nash equilibrium is not robust (it does not tolerate "faulty" or "unexpected" behavior), it does not deal with coalitions, it does not take computation cost into account, and it does not deal with cases where players are not aware of all aspects of the game. In this talk, I discuss solution concepts that try to address these shortcomings of Nash equilibrium. This talk represents joint work with various collaborators, including Ittai Abraham, Danny Dolev, Rica Gonen, Rafael Pass, and Leandro Rego. No background in game theory will be presumed. BIO Joseph Halpern received a B.Sc. in mathematics from the University of Toronto in 1975 and a Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard in 1981. In between, he spent two years as the head of the Mathematics Department at Bawku Secondary School, in Ghana. After a year as a visiting scientist at MIT, he joined the IBM Almaden Research Center in 1982, where he remained until 1996, also serving as a consulting professor at Stanford. In 1996, he joined the CS Department at Cornell, and is now the department chair. Halpern's major research interests are in reasoning about knowledge and uncertainty, security, distributed computation, decision theory, and game theory. Together with his former student, Yoram Moses, he pioneered the approach of applying reasoning about knowledge to analyzing distributed protocols and multi-agent systems. He has coauthored six patents, two books ("Reasoning About Knowledge" and "Reasoning about Uncertainty"), and over 300 technical publications. Halpern is a Fellow of AAAI, AAAS, ACM, IEEE, and SEAT (Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory). Among other awards, he received the ACM SIGART Autonomous Agents Research Award in 2011, the Dijkstra Prize in 2009, the ACM/AAAI Newell Award in 2008, the Godel Prize in 1997, was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2001-2002, and a Fulbright Fellow in 2001-2002 and 2009-2010. Two of his papers have won best-paper prizes at IJCAI (1985 and 1991), and another two received best-paper awards at the Knowledge Representation and Reasoning Conference (2006 and 2012). He was the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the ACM (1997-2003) and has been the program chair of a number of conferences, including the Symposium on Theory in Computing (STOC), Logic in Computer Science (LICS), Uncertainty in AI (UAI), Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC), and Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge (TARK). -- Dana M. Houston Language Technologies Institute School of Computer Science Carnegie Mellon University 6511 Gates Hillman Complex 5000 Forbes Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15213 T: (412)268-4717 F: (412)268-6298 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dhouston at cs.cmu.edu Mon Sep 16 12:10:22 2013 From: dhouston at cs.cmu.edu (Dana Houston) Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2013 12:10:22 -0400 Subject: [Intelligence Seminar] September 17, 12:00 noon:, Presentation by Joseph Halpern Message-ID: <52372D6E.8050605@cs.cmu.edu> INTELLIGENCE SEMINAR SEPTEMBER 17 AT 12:00 NOON, IN GCH 6115 (UNUSUAL TIME) SPEAKER: JOSEPH HALPERN (Cornell University) Host: Ariel Procaccia For meetings, contact Pat Loring (sawako at cs.cmu.edu ) BEYOND NASH EQUILIBRIUM: SOLUTION CONCEPTS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY Nash equilibrium is the most commonly used notion of equilibrium in game theory. However, it suffers from numerous problems. Some are well known in the game theory community. For example, the Nash equilibrium of repeated prisoner's dilemma is neither normatively nor descriptively reasonable. However, new problems arise when considering Nash equilibrium from a computer science perspective. For example, Nash equilibrium is not robust (it does not tolerate "faulty" or "unexpected" behavior), it does not deal with coalitions, it does not take computation cost into account, and it does not deal with cases where players are not aware of all aspects of the game. In this talk, I discuss solution concepts that try to address these shortcomings of Nash equilibrium. This talk represents joint work with various collaborators, including Ittai Abraham, Danny Dolev, Rica Gonen, Rafael Pass, and Leandro Rego. No background in game theory will be presumed. BIO Joseph Halpern received a B.Sc. in mathematics from the University of Toronto in 1975 and a Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard in 1981. In between, he spent two years as the head of the Mathematics Department at Bawku Secondary School, in Ghana. After a year as a visiting scientist at MIT, he joined the IBM Almaden Research Center in 1982, where he remained until 1996, also serving as a consulting professor at Stanford. In 1996, he joined the CS Department at Cornell, and is now the department chair. Halpern's major research interests are in reasoning about knowledge and uncertainty, security, distributed computation, decision theory, and game theory. Together with his former student, Yoram Moses, he pioneered the approach of applying reasoning about knowledge to analyzing distributed protocols and multi-agent systems. He has coauthored six patents, two books ("Reasoning About Knowledge" and "Reasoning about Uncertainty"), and over 300 technical publications. Halpern is a Fellow of AAAI, AAAS, ACM, IEEE, and SEAT (Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory). Among other awards, he received the ACM SIGART Autonomous Agents Research Award in 2011, the Dijkstra Prize in 2009, the ACM/AAAI Newell Award in 2008, the Godel Prize in 1997, was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2001-2002, and a Fulbright Fellow in 2001-2002 and 2009-2010. Two of his papers have won best-paper prizes at IJCAI (1985 and 1991), and another two received best-paper awards at the Knowledge Representation and Reasoning Conference (2006 and 2012). He was the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the ACM (1997-2003) and has been the program chair of a number of conferences, including the Symposium on Theory in Computing (STOC), Logic in Computer Science (LICS), Uncertainty in AI (UAI), Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC), and Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge (TARK). -- Dana M. Houston Language Technologies Institute School of Computer Science Carnegie Mellon University 6511 Gates Hillman Complex 5000 Forbes Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15213 T: (412)268-4717 F: (412)268-6298 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dhouston at cs.cmu.edu Thu Oct 10 11:24:37 2013 From: dhouston at cs.cmu.edu (Dana Houston) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 11:24:37 -0400 Subject: [Intelligence Seminar] Tepper Operations Research Seminar, Dr. Ashish Sabharwal, Oct. 18 In-Reply-To: <0BA1B1ED8F52F14C9E12E26F8903E23B090A04@PGH-MSGMB-03.andrew.ad.cmu.edu> References: <0BA1B1ED8F52F14C9E12E26F8903E23B090A04@PGH-MSGMB-03.andrew.ad.cmu.edu> Message-ID: <5256C6B5.1010805@cs.cmu.edu> Possibly of interest to the members of this mailing list: The following Tepper Operations Research seminar has been posted at: http://server1.tepper.cmu.edu/Seminars/seminar.asp?sort=1&short=Y Please take the time to schedule a meeting with the speaker on an individual basis.When you are at the seminar site, proceed to this seminar announcement.To add yourself for a meeting, click on View/Edit Schedule link and then click on the Edit Schedule link.Enter the name portion of your e-mail address (the @andrew.cmu.edu part is not needed) and click Update at bottom of page. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Name: Dr. Ashish Sabharwal Affiliation: IBM Watson Research Center Date: October 18, 2013 Time: 1:30 to 3:00 pm Location: Room 153 Posner Hall Title:Combinatorial Search in Parallel: Advances and Fundamental Barriers ABSTRACT:With modern day hardware providing easy access to over 10,000 compute cores, effective parallelization of algorithms has become a topic of wide interest. While approaches such as Map-Reduce have enjoyed tremendous success in tackling Data Parallelism, effective parallelization of sophisticated Combinatorial Search and Optimization engines remains a challenge. For instance, despite many attempts, parallel MIP solvers drastically lose efficiency after about 16 cores and parallel SAT solvers in the 2011 SAT Competition achieved a speedup of roughly 3 when given 32 cores. This talk will discuss three threads we have pursued at IBM Research to address the parallelization challenge. First, building upon the success of data-driven Portfolio Methods, we will see how column-generation based parallel scheduling can draw the best out of diverse, non-information-sharing solvers. Second, we will discuss frameworks SatX10 and DDX10 that make it easier for researchers to design and experiment with large scale parallelization schemes without any expertise in low level mechanisms such as MPI. Third, we will see recent evidence that the proof mechanisms underlying complete sequential search algorithms can impose significant bottlenecks to their efficient parallelization. Our findings suggest that the design of effective parallel solvers will require new techniques that fundamentally alter the structure of the underlying infeasibility or optimality proof.---------- BIO: Ashish Sabharwal is a research scientist in the Business Analytics and Math Sciences (BAMS) department at IBM Watson Research Center. He specializes in the areas of Combinatorial Reasoning, Probabilistic Inference, and Discrete Optimization and has been developing the next generation of advanced analytics capabilities as part of IBM's Smarter Energy Research Institute (SERI). Prior to late 2010, Ashish was a Research Associate at Cornell University's Institute for Computational Sustainability (ICS) and a Postdoc at Cornell's Intelligent Information Systems Institute (IISI). He received his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Washington, Seattle in 2001/2005. Ashish has co-authored over 60 research publications in major journals and conferences, in addition to several surveys for books and collections. He has co-developed solvers that have won in international SAT Competitions (2011, 2012, 2013). His research findings have been recognized with Best Paper Awards (AAAI, CP), a Best Student Paper Award (UAI), and Runner-up Prizes (UAI, IJCAI-JAIR 5-Year Best) during 2006-2013, in addition to several other nominations.---------- WEB: http://researcher.ibm.com/person/us-ashish.sabharwal -- Dana M. Houston Language Technologies Institute School of Computer Science Carnegie Mellon University 6511 Gates Hillman Complex 5000 Forbes Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15213 T: (412)268-4717 F: (412)268-6298 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: