The CSE Colloquium Series will host Dr. Predrag T. Tošić on February 7 at 4 p.m. in 115 Avery Hall. The talk will be proceeded by a reception at 3:30 p.m. in 348 Avery. Tošić is a technical program manager at Microsoft. He will present "Microsoft Online Services Division Research and Development".
Abstract:
Autonomous intelligent agents are an increasingly popular paradigm for modeling, analysis and design of a broad variety of engineering, socio-technical and even biological systems that are characterized by logical and physical distribution of decision-making and cognitive/computational resources. In this talk, we will discuss two types of strategic interactions among multiple autonomous agents. In one scenario, a relatively large group of collaborative agents is trying to coordinate with each other in a truly decentralized, peer-to-peer manner. While all agents share the same overarching objective, due to constraints on each individual agent's sensing, acting and reasoning capabilities, different agent in general may have different local "pictures of the world" and therefore reaching consensus among groups of agents on various matters of common interest is a non-trivial endeavor. In this context, we will focus on the specific problem of distributed multi-agent coalition formation. In the second part of the talk, we discuss repeated strategic encounters of self-interested agents, the ones that are driven by their individual objectives and do not share common goals with each other. In this setting, we are particularly interested in limitations of the classical game theory and its notions of what it means to play optimally. A complex non-zero-sum strategic game that we have studied recently is iterated traveler's dilemma; we will summarize some of the main findings of our investigation of that game. Lastly, in the third part of this talk, we will reflect on why should a research-minded graduate student seriously consider R&D careers in industry in general, and what is the appeal of joining Microsoft's Online Services Division (a.k.a. Bing), in particular.
Biography:
Dr. Predrag T. Tošić is a technical program manager with the Bing search team at Microsoft in Redmond, WA. Predrag holds PhD in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2006), where he did his dissertation on parametric models and coordination protocols for and emerging properties of large-scale multi-agent systems (MAS). His interests include AI, machine learning, information retrieval and distributed & graph algorithms and complex networks; more specifically, he is or has worked in optimizing large-scale Web search and data analytics, algorithmic and mathematical theory of repeated non-zero sum games, scalable coordination and coalition formation protocols, and emerging behavior in very large ensembles of autonomous agents. Tošić has authored over 50 peer-reviewed research papers in the areas of multi-agent systems, AI, machine learning, computational game theory, cellular and network automata, heuristic models of decision making under uncertainty and database systems. He has presented his research at over 30 international conferences and has served on half a dozen conference technical program committees, as well as reviewed for several peer-reviewed journals and one book series. His professional experience spans academia, a DOE research lab and high-tech industry. He currently works on helping improve Bing's search in a number of competitive international markets.