AI Seminar

Fei Fang - Data-Aware Game Theory and Mechanism Design for Security, Sustainability, and Mobility

Abstract: There is a rise of interest in developing artificial intelligence-based tools to address societal challenges in security, sustainability, and mobility domains, e.g., protecting critical infrastructure and cyber network, protecting wildlife, fishery, and forest, and improving the efficiency of ridesharing systems. Motivated by these challenges, we have proposed game theory and machine learning based models and algorithms that provide descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analysis for problems with strategic interactions between intelligent agents (such as law enforcement agencies and their adversaries, or the drivers and riders) and data available to some of the agents. The algorithms have led to several applications deployed in the field for protecting the Staten Island Ferry in New York City, for poaching threat tracking and prediction in Africa, and for tiger conservation in Southeast Asia.

Bio: Fei Fang is an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Software Research 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, advised by Prof. David Parkes and Prof. Barbara Grosz. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California in June 2016, advised by Prof. Milind Tambe. She received her bachelor degree from the Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University in July 2011. Her research lies in the field of artificial intelligence and multi-agent systems, focusing on computational game theory and mechanism design with applications to security, sustainability, and mobility domains. Her dissertation is selected as the runner-up for IFAAMAS-16 Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award. Her work has won the Innovative Application Award at Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI 16), the Outstanding Paper Award in Computational Sustainability Track at the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 15). Her work on “Protecting Moving Targets with Mobile Resources” has been deployed by the US Coast Guard for protecting the Staten Island Ferry in New York City since April 2013. Her work on designing patrol strategies to combat illegal poaching has lead to the deployment of PAWS application in a conservation area in Southeast Asia for protecting tigers.