COLLOQUIUM: Bhaskar Ray Chaudhury, "Discreet Fair Division"

Due to technical difficulties, captions are unavailable but are forthcoming soon. 

Abstract:
Fair and efficient allocation of resources is a fundamental problem in many disciplines, including computer science, economics, and social choice theory. This age-old problem arises naturally in a wide range of real-life settings such as division of labor, inheritance, or computing resources, divorce settlements, air traffic management, and frequency allocation. In a classic instance, we have agents and resources. Each agent has a valuation function that captures her (dis)utility for any bundle allocated to her. The objective is to find a "fair" allocation of resources so that each agent is content with her share. The resources to be divided can be divisible or indivisible, and they can be classified as desirable (goods) or undesirable (bads). Impressive progress has been made on fair division of divisible goods over the last seven decades. In contrast, fair division of indivisible goods (also called discrete fair division) is relatively less understood. In this talk, I will highlight the fundamental concepts, techniques, and challenges in discrete fair division. Subsequently, I will show my contributions in answering the most important open problems in this area.

Bio:
I am a final year Phd student at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics, under the supervision of Prof. Kurt Mehlhorn. I mostly work on economics and computation with a particular interest in fair division and competitive equilibrium theory. I have also explored some problems in fine grained complexity and computational geometry.

Part of the Illinois Computer Science Speakers Series. Faculty Host: Ruta Mehta