In the context of a collaborative research project between National ICT Australia (NICTA) and The University of New South Wales (UNSW), applications are sought for the position of
one PhD candidate
to work on the computational complexity of resource allocation problems, with a focus on parameterized complexity. The successful candidate will be jointly supervised by the project leaders, Prof Toby Walsh at NICTA and Dr Serge Gaspers at UNSW. She/he will be part of the Algorithmic Decision Theory group.
To be eligible for this NICTA scholarship the candidate needs to be admissible to UNSW as a research candidate within the School of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE). The expected start date is Semester 2 in 2013, i.e., around the end of July 2013. More information on the NICTA scholarships is available here.
Interested applicants are invited to send an expression of interest to Prof Toby Walsh and Dr Serge Gaspers including a CV, a research proposal (around 500 words), and recent transcripts by 15 February 2013. Please also organize for one reference letter/email to be sent to the same email addresses.
About the research topic. Resource allocation is a fundamental optimisation problem. How do we best divide limited resources between multiple parties? The problem has many dimensions. What do we mean by best? Fairest, greatest social utility, least envy, etc. What are we dividing? Divisible goods like time on the processor or indivisible goods like a set of machines? What mechanism are we using to do the division? For example, is the mechanism centralized or decentralized? Does this mechanism encourage or prevent strategic behaviour? Can it be manipulated? The goal of this project is to use the tools of game theory and computational complexity, especially of parameterized complexity, to study such resource allocation problems in more detail.
