סמינר מחלקתי - יאיר זיק

Abstract :

Cooperative game theory spans the formation of coalitions among collaborative agents, as well as 

proposing reasonable payoff divisions among them. This branch of game theory is rooted in Von-

Neumann & Morgenstern’s foundational work, with many beautiful theoretical ideas; however, it has seen 

relatively sparse application. In this talk, I will discuss several research thrusts which aim at making the 

theory of cooperative games more applicable; I will discuss how the introduction of overlapping coalition 

structures – i.e. allowing agents to divide their resources among more than one coalition – allows one to 

model complex agent interaction. 

Moreover, I will show how one can overcome the computational challenges traditionally associated with 

finding cooperative solution concepts by relaxing our requirements. By looking for a probably 

approximately correct (PAC) solution, and applying ideas from computational learning theory, one can 

find good solutions to cooperative games while eliminating computational overhead.

Finally, I will discuss exciting directions for the study of cooperative games, both in the application of the 

theory to causality and classification, and in empirical human trials

Short Bio:

Yair Zick is a postdoctoral research fellow in the computer science department at Carnegie Mellon 

University. He has completed his PhD at Nanyang Technological University, SPMS (funded by the 

Singapore A*STAR SINGA award). He received his B.Sc (Mathematics and the "Amirim" honors program) 

from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research interests include game theory, fair division and 

their applications to domains such as machine learning, security, and privacy. 

He is the recipient of the 2014 IFAAMAS Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award, and the 2011 

Pragnesh Jay Modi Best Student Paper Award.