Algorithmics, Social choice, Market Design, and Other Topics

FYI: 2012 GERAD Spring School  on Cooperative Games in Operations Research  (May 9-12, 2012) Topics Introduction to cooperative games Linear programming games Network games Combinatorial and sequencing games Sustainability of cooperation over time Scientific Coordinator Vito Fragnelli (University of Eastern Piedmont, Italy) Speakers Imma Curiel (University of the Netherlands Antilles) Vito Fragnelli (University of Eastern Piedmont, Italy) Henk Norde (Tilburg University, The Netherlands) Joaquín Sánchez-Soriano (Universidad Miguel Hernandez de Elche, Spain) Georges Zaccour (Chair in game theory and management, GERAD, HEC Montréal)

Endre Szemerédi has won the Abel Prize for the year 2012 . The official citation refers to Szemerédi 's "fundamental contributions to discrete mathematics and theoretical computer science". Szemerédi  is most famous for this regularity lemma  (see here for an intuitive description ).

The program of the 4th World Congress of the Game Theory Society is now public .

Judea Pear l has won the 2011 Turing Award . The official citation includes the following: Judea Pearl's work has transformed artificial intelligence (AI) by creating a representational and computational foundation for the processing of information under uncertainty.  Pearl's work went beyond both the logic-based theoretical orientation of AI and its rule-based technology for expert systems.  He identified uncertainty as a core problem faced by intelligent systems and developed an algorithmic interpretation of probability theory as an effective foundation for the representation and acquisition of knowledge. Focusing on conditional independence as an organizing principle for capturing structural aspects of probability distributions, Pearl showed how graph theory can be used to characterize conditional independence, and invented message-passing algorithms that exploit graphical structure to perform probabilistic reasoning effectively.  This breakthrough has had m...

After Amsterdam, Liverpool, and Düsseldorf, the biennial COMSOC will be held in Warsaw this year. The call for papers is out. Invited speakers include  Michel Le Breton  ,  Clemens Puppe  ,  Craig A. Tovey  ,  Gerhard J. Woeginger  , and    Rolf Niedermeier . ****************************** ****************************** **********     Fourth International Workshop on Computational Social Choice                            ( COMSOC -2012)                Krakow, Poland, September 11--13, 2012              URL:   http://www.ki.agh.edu.pl/ COMS OC-2012 ****************************** ****************************** **********

Peyton Young is an economist who has made profound contributions to various strands of economics including evolutionary game theory, social choice theory, fair division, and cooperative game theory. He has also written a number of enjoyable books such as on apportionment and fair division . Therefore it was pleasing to find this interview of Young in which talks in detail about his personal insights into game theory; how he got interested in the subject; and how he foresees future developments.

FYI:  The Third Workshop on Cooperative Games in Multiagent Systems                        (CoopMAS-2012)             http://staff.science.uva.nl/~ stephane/coopmas12/                  Workshop co-located with AAMAS-2012                            Valencia, Spain                         June 4th or 5th, 2012 **Key dates**  * Submission of contributions: February 28th 2012  * Acceptance notification: March 27th 2012  * Workshop: June 4th or 5th, 2012 *Submission Instructions* Submission must follow the Springer LNCS format and should be a maximum of 15 pages. Papers must be submitted in PDF through easychair: http://www.easychair.org/ confe rences/?conf=coopmas2012 *Aims and Focus* ...