Penn is Hiring in Computer Science

Penn Engineering is embarking on a period of substantial growth, and the computer science department plans to hire lots of people over the next several years. (You can see a draft of the Penn Engineering plan for growth here. "Data Science and Computation" and Security are both priority areas).

This year, we are planning to hire for multiple positions, both junior and senior, with a focus on (among other things), machine learning. 

So if you are on the market (or thinking about it), send us your application -- apply here: https://facultysearches.provost.upenn.edu/postings/663 

(Unless you want to apply for an endowed chair in computer graphics -- then apply here: https://facultysearches.provost.upenn.edu/postings/664 )

Edit: I forgot to mention! Interest in machine learning is university wide -- both statistics and ESE also plan to hire in machine learning.
Here is the link for applying to the statistics position: https://statistics.wharton.upenn.edu/recruiting/facultypositions/
And here is the link for ESE: http://www.ese.upenn.edu/faculty-staff/index.php

An action packed Monday at FCRC

FCRC begins next week, and due to the wonders of co-location will be action packed. (Monday will have among other things EC workshops, as well as the first full day of STOC talks). I've found myself on the organizing committee of two of the three EC workshops, and Monday is also when our STOC paper is scheduled.

So here are three (partially) conflicting events you might be interested in:

NetEcon 2015: Highlights include excellent keynote speakers: Rakesh Vohra at  9:00 am, Eva Tardos at 2:00 pm, and R. Srikant at 4:00 pm

The Workshop on Algorithmic Game Theory and Data Science: This workshop is highlighting work in a very exciting area -- the intersection between "data science" and mechanism design -- which is at its very beginning, and I think ripe for lots of important work to be done. Its also attracted a great lineup of speakers (my student Steven will be giving the talk on our paper).

The STOC presentation of our paper, Preserving Statistical Validity in Adaptive Data Analysis: This is at 1:55pm, unfortunately conflicting with NetEcon -- but the attendees of the AGT + Data Science workshop will get a break in order to attend. Vitaly will be giving the talk, which I expect will be very good.

If you want to hear a longer (but probably less good) version of the talk, you can tune in tomorrow at 1pm eastern when I talk about this paper for TCS+

EDIT: The video of the talk is here. It went off with only one technical hitch.

Algorithmic Game Theory and Data Science

With FOCS submissions sent off and EC rejections in hand, its time to think about presenting your work at a workshop, and chat with your colleagues doing similar things. 

If you are working on something at the intersection of algorithmic game theory and machine learning (this includes e.g. the sample complexity of auction design, or learning from revealed preferences, or learning from censored feedback), then you should consider the "Algorithmic Game Theory and Data Science" workshop that we'll be running during EC 2015. Conveniently, this is at FCRC, so if you were planning on attending EC or STOC (or SIGmetrics, or CCC, or...) you'll already be there in Portland. 

Deadline is in 10 days!

https://sites.google.com/site/agtanddatascienceworkshop2015/

---------------------------

Call for Papers

In conjunction with the Sixteenth ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC'15), we solicit submissions for the First Workshop on Algorithmic Game Theory and Data Science, to be held on June 15, 2015 in Portland, Oregon, USA. Computer systems have become the primary mediator of social and economic interactions, enabling transactions at ever-increasing scale.  Mechanism design when done on a large scale needs to be a data-driven enterprise.  It seeks to optimize some objective with respect to a huge underlying population that the mechanism designer does not have direct access to.  Instead, the mechanism designer typically will have access to sampled behavior from that population (e.g. bid histories, or purchase decisions).  This means that, on the one hand, mechanism designers will need to bring to bear data-driven methodology from statistical learning theory, econometrics, and revealed preference theory.  On the other hand, strategic settings pose new challenges in data science, and approaches for learning and inference need to be adapted to account for strategization.   The goal of this workshop is to frame the agenda for research at the interface of algorithms, game theory, and data science.  Papers from a rich set of experimental, empirical, and theoretical perspectives are invited.  Topics of interest include but are not limited to: Can good mechanisms be learned by observing agent behavior in response to other mechanisms?  How hard is it to "learn'' a revenue maximizing auction given a sampled bid history?  How hard is it to learn a predictive model of customer purchase decisions, or better yet, a set of prices that will accurately maximize profit under these behavioral decisions?  What is the sample complexity of mechanism design?  How much data is necessary to enable good mechanism design? How does mechanism design affect inference?  Are outcomes of some mechanisms more informative than those of others from the viewpoint of inference? How does inference affect mechanism design?  If participants know that their data is to be used for inference, how does this knowledge affect their behavior in a mechanism? Can tools from computer science and game theory be used to contribute rigorous guarantees to interactive data analysis?  Strategic interactions between a mechanism and a user base are often interactive (e.g. in the case of an ascending price auction, or repeated interaction with a customer and an online retailer), which is a setting in which traditional methods for preventing data over-fitting are weak. Is data an economic model? Can data be used to evaluate or replace existing economic models?  What is the consequence for game theory and economics for replacing the model with data. Submission Instructions Any submission format between abstracts and full papers will be considered.  Abstracts may be rejected if we cannot sufficiently evaluate their contribution.  Full papers will be evaluated after page 10 only at the discretion of the committee. We solicit both new work and work recently published or soon to be published in another venue.  For submissions of the latter kind, authors must clearly state the venue of publication.  This workshop will have no published proceedings.  Papers appearing in published conference proceedings or journals subsequent to EC 2014 will be considered, though preference may be given to papers that have not yet appeared.  Papers that have appeared or are to appear at EC or affiliated workshops will not be considered. Authors are encouraged to provide a link to an online version of the paper (such as on arXiv).  If accepted, such papers will be linked via an index to give an informal record of the workshop. All submissions should be sent electronically to AGTDataScienceWorkshop15@gmail.com on or before April 26th, 2015.  Notification of acceptance will be on May 11, 2015. Organizing Committee Shuchi Chawla, U. of Wisconsin  Hu Fu, Microsoft Research Jason Hartline, Northwestern U. Denis Nekipelov, U. of Virginia Aaron Roth, U. of Pennsylvania Kane Sweeney, eBay and Stubhub

Netecon deadline in two weeks

A reminder that the NetEcon workshop deadline is coming up in two weeks. If you plan to be at FCRC (for e.g. STOC, or EC, or Sigmetrics), this will be a great place to present your work and get it seen by both the EC and the SIGmetrics community. There's also a great lineup of invited talks (abstracts here: http://netecon.eurecom.fr/NetEcon2015/keynotes.html ) by R. Srikant, Rakesh Vohra, and Eva Tardos.

Here is the call: http://netecon.eurecom.fr/NetEcon2015/index.html

The submission deadline is April 22.

STOC 2015 Call for Workshops and Tutorials

Sanjeev Khanna and Chandra Chekuri are co-chairing the STOC 2015 workshops and tutorials, and are looking for submissions. The call is below:

Call for STOC 2015 Workshop and Tutorial Proposals

• Workshop and Tutorial Day: Sunday, June 14, 2015
• Workshop and Tutorial Co-Chairs: Chandra Chekuri and Sanjeev Khanna
• Submission deadline: March 20, 2015
• Notification: March 30, 2015

On Sunday, June 14, immediately preceding the main conference, STOC 2015 will hold a workshop-and-tutorials day. We invite groups of interested researchers to submit workshop or tutorial proposals. The goal of a workshop is to provide an informal forum for researchers to discuss important research questions, directions, and challenges. Connections between theoretical computer science and other areas, topics that are not well represented at STOC, and open problems are encouraged as workshop topics. Organizers are completely free to choose their workshop formats (invited speakers, panel discussions, etc.). The program for June 14th may also involve tutorials, each consisting of 1-2 survey talks on a particular area, and we welcome tutorial proposals as well.
STOC does not have funds to pay travel expenses or honoraria to invited workshop and tutorial speakers. Workshop and tutorials attendance will be free, and there is no separate registration for attending them. STOC will support coffee breaks for the workshops/tutorials attendees but no lunch will be provided. Note that STOC registration neither includes FCRC registration for Sunday, June 14 nor covers lunch for Sunday, June 14. Workshop/tutorial attendees who wish to attend another FCRC conference on June 14, would need to register for that conference.

Proposal submission

Workshop and tutorial proposals should be no longer than 2 pages. Please include a list of names and email addresses of the organizers, a description of the topic and the goals of the workshop or tutorial, the proposed workshop format (invited talks, contributed talks, panel, etc.), and proposed or tentatively confirmed speakers if known. Please also indicate the preferred length of time for your workshop or tutorial, along with the minimum acceptable time. We anticipate a 4-5 hour block for each workshop and a 2-4 hour block for each tutorial. Please feel free to contact the Workshop and Tutorial Co-Chairs at the email addresses below if you have questions about workshop or tutorial proposals.

Submission deadline

Proposals should be submitted by March 20, 2015, via email to chekuri@illinois.edu and sanjeev@cis.upenn.edu. Proposers will be notified by March 30, 2015, about whether their proposals have been accepted.

http://acm-stoc.org/stoc2015/callforworkshops.html

Bringing Differential Privacy to the Masses <3

This Valentines Day, we'll be bringing differential privacy to the (scientific) masses, with a session at the AAAS annual meeting in San Jose.

If you happen to be attending, you should stop by: https://aaas.confex.com/aaas/2015/webprogram/Session9556.html

NetEcon 2015

Patrick Loiseau, Adam Wierman, and I are co-chairing the 2015 NetEcon workshop, to be held in conjunction with EC and Sigmetrics at this year's FCRC in Portland. You should stop by if you are attending any of the FCRC conferences, (and submit a paper). If you haven't been to a previous iteration, this workshop brings together people interested in game theory from both the networking and theory/AI communities, so is a great place to present work that might be of interest to both communities, or to pick up problems that are interesting from a different community than yours.

We've got a great set of invited speakers: R. Srikant, Ricky Vohra, and Eva Tardos.

So start thinking about what you want to submit -- you've only got about 3 months.

*******************************************************************
Call For Papers:

         NetEcon 2015: The 10th Workshop on the Economics of Networks, 
Systems and Computation
         At FCRC 2015, in conjunction with ACM EC and ACM SIGMETRICS
         Monday, June 15, 2015 (Portland, Oregon, USA)

http://netecon.eurecom.fr/NetEcon2015/


*******************************************************************
INVITED SPEAKERS

     * *R. Srikant*, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
     * *Rakesh V. Vohra*, University of Pennsylvania
     * *Eva Tardos*, Cornell University


*******************************************************************
CALL FOR PAPERS

Today's communication networks and networked systems are highly complex 
and heterogeneous, and are often owned by multiple profit-making 
entities. For new technologies or infrastructure designs to be adopted, 
they must not be only based on sound engineering performance 
considerations but also present the right economic incentives. Recent 
changes in regulations of the telecommunication industry make such 
economic considerations even more urgent. For instance, concerns such as 
network neutrality have a significant impact on the evolution of 
communication networks.

At the same time, communication networks and networked systems support 
increasing economic activity based on applications and services such as 
cloud computing, social networks, and peer-to-peer networks. These 
applications pose new challenges such as the development of good pricing 
and incentive mechanisms to promote effective system-wide behavior. In 
relation to these applications, security and privacy also require 
consideration of economic aspects to be fully understood.

The aim of NetEcon is to foster discussions on the application of 
economic and game-theoretic models and principles to address challenges 
in the development of networks and network-based applications and 
services. NetEcon was established in 2006 (succeeding to the P2PECON, 
IBC and PINS workshops) and merged with the W-PIN workshop in 2013. We 
invite submission of extended abstracts describing original research on 
theoretical/methodological contributions or on applications to cases of 
interest. It is our hope that NetEcon will serve as a feeder workshop, 
i.e., that expanded, polished versions of extended abstracts will appear 
later in major conference proceedings and refereed journals of relevant 
research communities.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

     * Pricing of resources in communication networks, grids, and cloud 
computing
     * Pricing of information goods and services; copyright issues, 
effect of network externalities (e.g., in social network)
     * Economic issues in universal broadband access; economics of 
interconnection and peering
     * Effects of market structure and regulations (e.g., network 
neutrality)
     * Economics of network security and privacy; valuation of personal data
     * Auctions with applications to networks: spectrum auctions, 
auction-based marketplaces for network and cloud resources
     * Incentive mechanisms for networks: peer-to-peer systems, clouds, 
wireless networks, spam prevention, security
     * Methods for engineering incentives and disincentives (e.g., 
reputation, trust, control, accountability, anonymity)
     * Empirical studies of strategic behavior (or the lack thereof) in 
existing, deployed systems
     * Design of incentive-aware network architectures and protocols
     * Game-theoretic models and techniques for network economics: large 
games, learning, mechanism design, interaction of game theory and 
information theory or queuing theory, information exchange, diffusion, 
dynamics of cooperation and network formation, trades in social and 
economic networks
     * Algorithmic mechanism design for network systems
     * Critiques of existing models and solution concepts, as well as 
proposals of better models and solution concepts
     * Studies of open collaboration, peer production, crowdsourcing, 
and human computation.


*******************************************************************
SUBMISSION FORMATTING GUIDELINES AND PROCEEDINGS

Submissions must be in the form of extended abstracts of 3-4 pages, 
including all figures, tables, references, appendices, etc. They must be 
formatted according to the standard alternate ACM PER double column 
format using letter paper. You are encouraged to use the ACM 
sig-alternate-per latex template 
(http://www.sigmetrics.org/sig-alternate-per.cls).

Accepted extended abstracts will be published in a special issue of ACM 
Performance Evaluation Review (PER) and will be available online through 
ACM portal digital library. Authors of accepted abstracts grant ACM 
permission to publish them in print and digital formats.

Note that authors retain the copyright of their work published in ACM 
PER, with freedom to submit it elsewhere. Yet, authors for whom 
publication of a 3-4 pages extended abstract in the NetEcon 2015 
proceedings would preclude later publication of an expanded version in 
the relevant venue may elect to contribute only a one-page abstract of 
their submitted extended abstract to the NetEcon 2015 proceedings. Such 
an abstract should include the URL of a working paper or preprint that 
contains the main results presented at the NetEcon workshop. Authors 
will make this decision after receiving a notice of acceptance.

If the number of excellent submissions is larger than we have space to 
allot presentations for, some authors will be offered the opportunity to 
present their work during a poster session.


*******************************************************************
COMMITTES

PC CHAIRS
     Patrick Loiseau (EURECOM, France)
     Aaron Roth (UPenn, USA)
     Adam Wierman (Caltech, USA)

WEBMASTER
     Michela Chessa (EURECOM, France)

TECHNICAL PROGRAM COMMITTEE
     Matthew Andrews (Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, USA)
     Itai Ashlagi (MIT, USA)
     Moshe Babaioff (Microsoft Research, Israel)
     Tamer BaÅŸar (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA)
     Bobby Bhattarcharjee (University of Maryland, USA)
     Rainer Böhme (WWU Münster, Germany)
     Kostas Bimpikis (Stanford University, USA)
     Eilyan Bitar (Cornell University, USA)
     Augustin Chaintreau (Columbia University, USA)
     Michela Chessa (EURECOM, France)
     kc claffy (CAIDA / UC San Diego, USA)
     Costas Courcoubetis (SUTD, Singapore and AUEB, Greece)
     Amogh Dhamdhere (CAIDA / UC San Diego, USA)
     Constantine Dovrolis (GeorgiaTech, USA)
     Rachid Elazouzi (University of Avignon, France)
     Sergey Gorinsky (Institute IMDEA Networks, Spain)
     Jens Grossklags (The Pennsylvania State University, USA)
     Roch Guerin (Washington University in St. Louis, USA)
     Nidhi Hegde (Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, France)
     Ekram Hossain (University of Manitoba, Canada)
     Stratis Ioannidis (Yahoo! labs, USA)
     Krisnamurthy Iyer (Cornell University, USA)
     Rahul Jain (USC, USA)
     Ian Kash (Microsoft Research, UK)
     David Kempe (USC, USA)
     Peter Key (Microsoft Research, UK)
     Nikolaos Laoutaris (Telefonica Research, Spain)
     Dave Levin (University of Maryland, USA)
     Patrick Loiseau (EURECOM, France) -- co-chair
     Brendan Lucier (Microsoft Research, USA)
     John C. S. Lui (The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)
     Patrick Maillé (Institut Mines-Telecom / Telecom Bretagne, France)
     Jason Marden (University of Colorado, Boulder, USA)
     Ravi Mazumdar (University of Waterloo, Canada)
     Jeonghoon Mo (Yonsei University, South Korea)
     John Musacchio (UC Santa Cruz, USA)
     Andrew Odlyzko (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA)
     Aaron Roth (UPenn, USA) -- co-chair
     Galina Schwartz (UC Berkeley, USA)
     Paul G. Spirakis (University of Liverpool, UK and CTI, Greece)
     Nicolás Stier Moses (Facebook Data Science, USA)
     Vijay Subramanian (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA)
     John N. Tsitsiklis (MIT, USA)
     Bruno Tuffin (Inria, France)
     Adrian Vetta (McGill University, Canada)
     Steven Weber (Drexel University, USA)
     Adam Wierman (Caltech, USA) -- co-chair


*******************************************************************
IMPORTANT DATES

     * Wednesday April 22, 2015, 11:59pm PST: Submission deadline (firm)
     * Wednesday May 13, 2015: Notification to authors
     * Monday June 8, 2015: Final version for the workshop's website due
     * Monday June 15, 2015: Workshop in Portland
     * Monday July 13, 2015: Final version for the ACM PER proceedings due


*******************************************************************
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

For more information, please contact the organizers or visit the 
workshop website: http://netecon.eurecom.fr/NetEcon2015/.