From marbles-isi@mailman.isi.edu Fri Jun 6 23:17:56 2003 From: marbles-isi@mailman.isi.edu (Martin Frank) Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2003 15:17:56 -0700 Subject: [Marbles-isi] FYI: talk on campus: Market-Based Allocation of Divisible Resources Message-ID: <015c01c32c79$7b158a20$2f800980@FREEDOM> Cheers, yours, Martin -----Original Message----- From: Milind Tambe [mailto:tambe@usc.edu] Sent: Friday, June 06, 2003 2:24 PM To: lerman@ISI.EDU; frank@ISI.EDU Subject: Short notice I know this is very very short notice, but, I have a couple of post-doc candidates coming through at USC CS, one talking about market-based systems, and the other talking about mobile agents. Both are strong on formal methods, mathematical proofs etc. Both are from Urbana Champaign. If you think you might be interested, or someone in your group might be interested in attending their talks, please let me know. Attached is the abstract for the first talk, to be delivered on Monday morning, June 9th. at 10:30 AM in SAL 222. -- Milind Market-Based Allocation of Divisible Resources ---------------------------------------------- Advances in information technology have created worlds of distributed autonomous agents which require access to scarce network and computational resources. We investigate market mechanisms as a tool to regulate the allocation of such resources in a dynamic and decentralized manner. Game theory is applied to analyze equilibrium properties of divisible auctions. We address many interesting problems unearthed by this approach such as the development of stable negotiation protocols, the management of incentives that lead to cooperative or degenerative behavior of agents, and the design of efficient mechanisms. From marbles-isi@mailman.isi.edu Tue Jun 10 17:13:05 2003 From: marbles-isi@mailman.isi.edu (Min Cai) Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2003 09:13:05 -0700 Subject: [Marbles-isi] Fw: your dissertation defence preview tomorrow Message-ID: <000e01c32f6b$2ff7a1f0$6501a8c0@pioneer> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Pragnesh J. Modi" To: Sent: Monday, June 09, 2003 7:36 PM Subject: your dissertation defence preview tomorrow > > Hi, Min, > > Below are the details for the practice talk. Please do forward this message to > other members of your group if they are interested in attending. > > Cheers > Jay > > > ------- Forwarded Message > > Date: Mon, 09 Jun 2003 17:50:10 -0700 > From: "Pragnesh J. Modi" > To: isd-staff@ISI.EDU > Subject: Talk announcement > > > Hi, Folks, > > I will be giving a practice talk for my PhD defense in the 9th floor conference > room tomorrow (Tuesday, June 10). Please attend if you are interested in > hearing about some recent advances in Multiagent Systems. > > Time: 3:00 pm > Location: 9th floor conf room > Date: Tues, June 10 > > > Cheers > Jay > > > - ---------------------------------------------------------------- > > PhD Defense Announcement > > Title: Distributed Constraint Optimization in Multiagent Systems > Candidate: Pragnesh Jay Modi > > Thesis Committee: > > Prof Wei-Min Shen (Chair) > Prof Milind Tambe (Co-Chair) > Prof Paul Rosenbloom > Prof Yan Jin (outside member) > Prof Victor Lesser (from U. Mass) > > > Abstract > - -------- > > To coordinate effectively, multiple loosely-coupled agents must reason > about the interactions between their individual local decisions. > Distributed planning, distributed scheduling, distributed resource > allocation and distributed task allocation are some examples where such > reasoning is required. Previous research in AI and Multiagent Systems > has shown that constraints are an effective way to represent and reason > about such problems. > > This dissertation advances the state-of-the-art in Multiagent Systems > through three key innovations. First, we present the Adopt algorithm for > solving the Distributed Constraint Optimization Problem (DCOP). Adopt is > the first-ever algorithm that is completely decentralized, allows > asynchronous concurrent execution, is guaranteed to terminate with the > globally optimal solution. Existing methods for DCOP that guarantee > optimality are synchronous and prohibitively slow, while other > incomplete methods may provide solutions of arbitrarily poor quality in > the worst case. Adopt is empirically shown to yield orders of magnitude > speedups over existing methods and is shown to be robust to lost messages. > > Second, this dissertation introduces bounded-error approximation as a > flexible method whereby agents can find global solutions that may not be > optimal but are guaranteed to be within a given distance from optimal. > This method is useful for time-limited applications because it decreases > solution time and communication overhead. Bounded-error approximation is > a significant departure from existing incomplete local methods, which > rely exclusively on local information to obtain a decrease in solution > time but at the cost of abandoning all theoretical guarantees on > solution quality. > > Third, this dissertation presents generalized mapping strategies that > allow a significant class of distributed resource allocation problem to > be automatically represented via distributed constraints. Theoretical > results show the correctness of the mappings and provide multiagent > researchers with a general, reusable methodology for understanding, > representing and solving their own distributed resource allocation problems. > > > Bio > - ------ > > Pragnesh Jay Modi received his B.S. with University Honors in Computer > Science and Mathematics in 1997 from Carnegie-Mellon University. Since > 1998, he has been a research assistant at the University of Southern > California's Information Sciences Institute, working on various > aspects of Multiagent Systems. > > > > > > > > > > > ------- End of Forwarded Message > > >