Curriculum Vitae Amir Ronen Department of , and ISCI Berkeley http://robotics.stanford.edu/~amirr [email protected]

Academic Appointments Post-doctoral research fellow: Stanford University, Department of Com- puter Science (with Professor Yoav Shoham) and UC Berkeley, Interna- tional Computer Science Institute (with Professors , Richard Karp and Dr. Scott Shenker). 2001 - 2002. Post-doctoral research fellow: Stanford University, Department of Com- puter Science (with Professor Yoav Shoham). 2000 - 2001. Session Leader, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Issues on the Border of Economics and Computation, Winter 1999; Data Structures, Spring 1997; Data Structures, Spring 1998; , Spring 1992;

Education Ph.D. Institute of Computer Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Is- rael. 1996 - 2000. Thesis: Solving Optimization Problems Among Selfish Players. Committee: Professors (advisor), Nathan Linial and Motty Perry. M.Sc. with honors in Computer Science, Institute of Computer Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. 1991-93. Thesis: A Competitive Approach for Managing Sharing in the Distributed Execution of Functional Programs. Advisor: Professor Amnon Barak. B.Sc. with honors in Mathematics (extended program) and Computer Sci- ence, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. 1988-91.

Research Interests The interplay between and computer science, theoretical com- puter science, game theory, mathematical economics, electronic commerce and the Internet. I am also interested in information retrieval theory and practice, machine learning, multi agent systems and distributed .

Teaching Interests I am fully committed to teaching, both graduate and undergraduates and I love the interaction with students. In addition to courses related to my own area of research, I am capable of teaching most courses on the founda- tions of computer science (e.g. Algorithms) and software development (e.g. Java programming). My experience as a session leader includes graduate courses such as Issues on the Border of Economics and Computation and Computational Complexity and first year courses such as Data Structures (225 students, emphasis on object oriented programming).

Industrial Experience Compassware Development Ltd. 1995-96. Research and implementa- tion of models, algorithms and tools for information retrieval. The work included statistical processing of natural language queries, a novel method for query expansion and automatic building of thesauri, an for relevance feedback incorporating techniques from information retrieval and machine learning and a tool for automatic topic extraction. In collaboration with Bar-Ilan University faculty. Scitex Ltd. 1993-94. Worked in a team developing a leading layout appli- cation for Apple platforms.

Awards and Honors

• Fulbright Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship. 2000-2001 (declined).

• Wolf Prize for Ph.D. students, 1999.

• M.Sc. merit scholarship, 1991-92, 1992-93.

• B.Sc. Dean’s Prize 1988-89. Dean’s List 1989-90.

• Member of a development team that received the Israeli Defense Award, Israel Defense Forces, 1986.

• Second Place, Shay Bleyman Mathematics and Computer Science Competition, Tel-Aviv University School of Mathematics, 1983.

Journal Papers Algorithmic Mechanism Design. Noam Nisan and Amir Ronen. Games and Economic Behavior 35 (2001): 166-196. A Competitive Algorithm for Managing Sharing in the Distributed Execution of Functional Programs. Gad Aharoni, Amnon Barak, and Amir Ronen. Journal of Functional Programming 7 (1997): 421-40.

Conference Papers On Approximating Optimal Auctions (extended abstract). Amir Ronen. In proceedings of the Third ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC01). Mechanism Design with Incomplete Languages. Amir Ronen. In proceedings of the Third ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC01). Algorithms for Rational Agents. Amir Ronen. In Proceedings of the 27th Annual Conference on Current Trends in Theory and Practice of Informatics (SOFSEM2000). Computationally feasible VCG mechanisms. Noam Nisan and Amir Ronen. In Proceedings of the Second ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC00). Algorithmic Mechanism Design (extended abstract). Noam Nisan and Amir Ronen. In Proceedings of the 31st Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC99).

Ongoing Projects Fault tolerant mechanism design. With Yoav Shoham, Moshe Tennenholtz and Ryan Porter. Further analysis of optimal auctions. With Christos Papadimitriou and Felix Wu.

Talks

• ”On Approximating Optimal Auctions”. Presented at DIMACS Work- shop on Computational Issues in Game Theory and Mechanism Design (November 2001), UC Berkeley and Stanford.

• ”Algorithms for Rational Agents”. Invited talk at the 27th Annual Conference on Current Trends in Theory and Practice of Informatics (SOFSEM2000).

• ”Algorithmic Mechanism Design”. Presented at MIT, Stanford, Berke- ley, Princeton, AT&T, IBM, Hebrew University and at STOC99. • ”A Note on Strategy-Proof Mechanisms”. Presented at the North- western/MEDS Workshop on Micro-Economic Theory, July 1999.

Public Service Committee member. The Eighteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-02). (Expected in January 2002.) Committee member. The Third ACM Conference on Electronic Com- merce (EC01). 2001. Committee member. IJCAI 2001 workshop on economic models, agents, and auctions. 2001. Reviewer. The 42nd Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS 2001); The Seventeenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2001).

Miscellaneous Citizenship: Israel. Visa Status: J1.