Speaker: Fei Fang Carnegie Mellon University
Time: 2019-12-06 14:00-2019-12-06 15:00
Venue: FIT Lecture Hall

Abstract:

Real-world problems such as protecting critical infrastructure and cyber networks and protecting wildlife, fishery, and forest often involve multiple decision-makers. While game theory is an established paradigm for such problems, its applicability in practice is often limited by computational intractability in large games, the unavailability of game parameters and the lack of rationality of human players. On the other hand, machine learning has led to huge successes in various domains and can be leveraged to overcome the limitations of the game-theoretic analysis. In this talk, I will introduce our work on integrating machine learning with computational game theory for addressing societal challenges, including data-based game-theoretic reasoning, learning-powered strategy computation in large scale games, and end-to-end learning of game parameters.

Short Bio:

Fei Fang is an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Software Research in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Before joining CMU, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Research on Computation and Society (CRCS) at Harvard University. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California in June 2016. Her research lies in the field of artificial intelligence and multi-agent systems, focusing on integrating machine learning with game theory. Her work has been motivated by and applied to security, sustainability, and mobility domains, contributing to the theme of AI for Social Good. Her work has won the Distinguished Paper at IJCAI-ECAI’18, Innovative Application Award at IAAI’16, the Outstanding Paper Award in Computational Sustainability Track at IJCAI’15. She was invited to give an IJCAI-19 Early Career Spotlight talk. Her dissertation is selected as the runner-up for IFAAMAS-16 Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award, and is selected to be the winner of the William F. Ballhaus, Jr. Prize for Excellence in Graduate Engineering Research as well as the Best Dissertation Award in Computer Science at the University of Southern California. Her work has been deployed by the US Coast Guard for protecting the Staten Island Ferry in New York City since April 2013. Her work has led to the deployment of PAWS (Protection Assistant for Wildlife Security) in multiple conservation areas around the world, which provides predictive and prescriptive analysis for anti-poaching effort.