Design and Analysis of Social Computation Mechanisms

The goal of my research is to design mechanisms which combine computer power and human effort together to solve problems which cannot be solved by computers or humans alone. My research broadly spans and draws from the fields of machine learning, game theory, online optimization, and human-computer interaction. I am particularly interested in the design and analysis of social computation mechanisms, which leverage human effort on social platforms to solve machine-intractable problems. My work combines theoretical analysis with empirical experiments. In particular, I developed theoretical models and designed algorithms to address the problems of learning users’ skills to optimize system performance and designing incentives to motivate high quality contributions from users. I also conducted empirical experiments to help develop user behavior models, which play a crucial role in theoretical analysis. My vision is to work towards better social computation mechanisms by bridging the gap between theory and practice in this area.