Algorithmics, Social choice, Market Design, and Other Topics

(Thanks to Felix Brandt for pointing out the video)

The 2018 Sydney Algorithms Day will be organized in the University of Sydney on the 25th of June 2018. The aim of this one-day event is to bring together algorithms researchers and discuss current trends and problems in the field. The meeting is sponsored by the University of Sydney. If you would like to attend, please register by sending a mail to Joachim Gudmundsson (joachim.gudmundsson@sydney.edu.au). Registration is open to everyone and is free. If you would like to give a talk, please indicate that in your mail.  Venue: School of IT Lecture Theatre 123, University of Sydney.

AI's 10 to watch 2018 list has been announced . AGT and multi-agent systems researchers have representation in the form of Bo An who has been doing exciting work on game theory and security. Congratulations to Nanyang Technological University as well: three of whose faculty members have made it to the list. 

The 2018  CPDM Workshop  will be held on 12 and 13th of June 2018 at UTS. The workshop has several international speakers including: Tayfun Sonmez Stanley Reynolds Vijay Krishna Frank Wolak Matt Van Essen Steven Tadelis Michael Ostrovsky John Ledyard Mohammad Akbarpour The workshop also has a reasonable Data61 representation including Andrew Reeson, Melanie Ayre, and yours truly.

Australia's ecosystem in market design has been growing and shining in multiple places.  Recently, I had the opportunity to visit Melbourne University's Centre for Market Design (cmd.org.au) and also revisit the UTS Centre for Policy and Market Design in Sydney (https://www.uts.edu.au/research-and-teaching/our-research/centre-policy-and-market-design). It was great to meet so many researchers working interesting topics in Melbourne. Similarly, the UTS center that originally started in 2015 is in full swing and in the capable hands of the Isa Hafalir who moved recently to UTS from CMU. Of course, much closer to home, we have teams at UNSW and Data61 working on market design including ADT, CSIRO digital productivity, and the AGORA market design center at UNSW.

There has been fascinating new progress on the problem of fair cake cutting. A notable new result is the first bounded envy-free protocol for "chore division "!  The problem concerns "cake" that no one is willing to have. Chore division has also been called the "salty cake" problem. The new protocol was developed by a group of researchers (Sina Dehghani, Alireza Farhadi, MohammadTaghi HajiAghayi, and Hadi Yami) from U of Maryland. The paper was presented at SODA 2018 recently.