Speaker:
Peter Wurman, Computer Science and Engineering, University of Michigan
Abstract: Electronic auctions are quickly becoming the dominant negotiation mechanism in electronic commerce. Auctions are also a fundamental component of market-oriented programming--the application of economic models to computational problems. When the participants in the market are not under our control, the success of the system depends on the selection of an appropriate market design.
I will present a structured view of the space of potential market designs, and will use a problem in distrubuted scheduling to illustrate some of the computational and economic tradeoffs. This framework, which evolved from my work on the Michigan Internet AuctionBot, highlights open questions in computational auction theory, and provides a structure within which to view recent advances in combinatorial auctions.
Short Bio: Peter Wurman is a PhD candidate in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan. He has MS degrees from the University of Michigan in Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering, and an SB degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Mechanical Engineering. Research interests include multiagent systems, market-oriented programming, and electronic commerce. Mr. Wurman is the recipient of the IBM Institute for Advanced Commerce's 1998 fellowship for Best Thesis Proposal in E-Commerce.