英国伦敦国王学院博士后职位招聘–计算机科学、数学、经济学或相关领域

Job description  

The Department of Informatics is looking to appoint a post-doctoral research associate in the area of algorithmic mechanism design, funded by the EPSRC project “Designing Efficient Market Mechanisms with Simplicity Requirements”, led by Dr Bart de Keijzer. The post is offered on an a fixed-term contract for 1.5 years, and has a flexible starting date, between 1 February 2024 and 1 July 2024.

The project is aimed at studying a hierarchy of mechanism design problems for market settings, with a focus on designing mechanisms that simultaneously achieve good social welfare approximation guarantees, and satisfy certain simplicity requirements. Bilateral trade among one seller and one buyer is the simplest setting in this hierarchy, where the aim will be to improve on the present lower and upper bounds on the social welfare achievable by trading under a fixed price mechanism. On the other end of the hierarchy lie combinatorial exchange markets, where many agents act as traders and have complex preferences over a set of tradeable goods, and where the main aim will be to develop conceptually simple and computationally efficient mechanisms that facilitate trade among such agents.

The design of simple and transparent mechanisms has important industrial applications, including to the access economy, and to online advertising platforms. The project will involve collaboration with Meta (in particular, with Dr Riccardo Colini-Baldeschi from Meta’s Central Applied Science Team), which has one of the largest online advertising platforms, with billions of users across the world.

An ideal candidate is highly experienced in theoretical computer science will have a strong research background in algorithmic game theory and algorithmic mechanism design or a related area. The candidate will also have (or be near-completion of) a PhD in Computer Science, Mathematics, or a related area.

Funding for the post is restricted to the first point on the salary scale but will include incremental progression in-line with probation.

For further information about the project, or any other informal enquiries, please contact Bart at Bart.de_Keijzer@kcl.ac.uk  .

This post will be offered on an fixed-term contract for 18 months.

This is a full-time post.
Key responsibilities 

• Conducting and collaborating on research in the area of algorithmic mechanism design for markets.
• Writing up results for publication in peer-reviewed venues.
• Publishing research findings in peer-reviewed scientific journals and presenting results at conferences, workshops, and seminars.

The above list of responsibilities may not be exhaustive, and the post holder will be required to undertake such tasks and responsibilities as may reasonably be expected within the scope and grading of the post.
Skills, knowledge, and experience 

Essential criteria

1.       Degree in computer science, mathematics, economics, or a related field. 

2.       PhD in computer science, mathematics, economics or a closely related field.* 

3.       Good oral and written communication skills, including the ability to write publications and present research results. 

4.       A track record in publishing in peer-reviewed journals and conferences.  

5.       Ability to manage own academic research activities. 

6.       Ability to contribute ideas for new research projects. 

Desirable criteria

1.       A strong publication record in algorithms, complexity, mechanism design, game theory, optimisation, or related areas.

2.       Expertise in algorithm and mechanism design, approximation and randomized algorithms, probability theory, linear programming, combinatorial opmisation, and computational complexity theory.

3.       Familiarity with the existing literature on the aforementioned areas.

* Please note that this is a PhD level role but candidates who have submitted their thesis and are awaiting award of their PhDs will be considered. In these circumstances the appointment will be made at Grade 5, spine point 30 with the title of Research Assistant. Upon confirmation of the award of the PhD, the job title will become Research Associate and the salary will increase to Grade 6.