Evdokia Nikolova



Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843-3112
USA
Office: 515A HRBB
Tel: 979-862-6476
Email: my last name@tamu.edu

Research interests: Algorithms for risk management; Optimization under uncertainty; Algorithmic Game Theory.

Short bio

Evdokia Nikolova is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University. Previously, she was a postdoctoral associate in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, working with Prof. Hari Balakrishnan. She graduated with a BA in Applied Mathematics with Economics from Harvard University, MS in Mathematics from Cambridge University, U.K. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from MIT.

Evdokia Nikolova's research aims to improve the design and efficiency of complex systems (such as networks and electronic markets), by integrating stochastic, dynamic and economic analysis. She is very interested in how the abundance of data and information can enhance the interaction of people, markets and technology in order to improve human lives. Her internships with Google and Yahoo! Research as a Ph.D. student convinced her of the need for an inherently interdisciplinary approach combining Computer Science & Engineering, Operations Research and Economics for solving practically relevant problems (such as the design of information markets and sponsored search mechanisms). Her recent work examines how human risk aversion transforms traditional computational models and solutions. One of her algorithms has been adapted in the MIT CarTel project for traffic-aware routing. She currently focuses on integrating risk-aversion in game theoretic models of stochastic network routing.

Publications*

Risk Sensitivity of Price of Anarchy under Uncertainty.
Georgios Piliouras, Evdokia Nikolova and Jeff S. Shamma.
In Proceedings of the 14th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC 2013). Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, June 16-20, 2013.

Sample complexity of risk-averse bandit-arm selection. [pdf]
Jia Yuan Yu, Evdokia Nikolova.
In Proceedings of the 23rd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2013). Beijing, China, August 3-9, 2013.

Multi-modal Journey Planning in the Presence of Uncertainty.
Adi Botea, Michele Berlingerio, Evdokia Nikolova.
In Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS 2013). Rome, Italy, 10-14 June, 2013.

Practical Route Planning Under Delay Uncertainty: Stochastic Shortest Path Queries [pdf]
Sejoon Lim, Christian Sommer, Evdokia Nikolova, and Daniela Rus
In RSS - Robotics: Science and Systems VIII, 2012.

Stochastic Selfish Routing [pdf]
Evdokia Nikolova, Nicolas E. Stier Moses.
ACM SIGecom Exchanges, 11:1, 21-25, 2012.
(Summary of paper below.)

A Mean-Risk Model for the Stochastic Traffic Assignment Problem
Evdokia Nikolova, Nicolas E. Stier Moses.
Full version: Columbia Working Paper # DRO-2011-03, May 2011. This version: December 2011. [pdf]
Conference: (with title Stochastic Selfish Routing) [pdf] In Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium on Algorithmic Game Theory (SAGT '11), Salerno, Amalfi Coast, Italy, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer, Berlin, 2011.

Approximation Algorithms for Offline Risk-averse Combinatorial Optimization
Evdokia Nikolova.
Full version: [pdf]
Conference: [pdf] (with title Approximation Algorithms for Reliable Stochastic Combinatorial Optimization.) In Proceedings of APPROX '10, Barcelona, Spain, 2010.

High-performance heuristics for optimization in stochastic traffic engineering problems [ps], [pdf]
Evdokia Nikolova.
In Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Large-Scale Scientific Computing (LSSC), 2009.

Offline Ad Slot Scheduling
Jon Feldman, S. Muthukrishnan, Evdokia Nikolova, Martin Pal.
Conference: [pdf] (with title A Truthful Mechanism for Offline Ad Slot Scheduling) In Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Algorithmic Game Theory (SAGT '08), Padeborn, Germany, May 2008.
Full version: [pdf]

Route Planning under Uncertainty: The Canadian Traveller Problem [ps], [pdf]
Evdokia Nikolova, David Karger.
In Proceedings of the Twenty-Third Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), Chicago, IL, July 2008.

On the Hardness and Smoothed Complexity of Quasi-Concave Minimization [ps], [pdf]
Jonathan Kelner, Evdokia Nikolova.
In Proceedings of FOCS '07, Providence, RI, October 2007.

Incentive-Compatible Interdomain Routing with Linear Utilities
Alexander Hall, Evdokia Nikolova, and Christos Papadimitriou.
Conference: [pdf] In Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop On Internet And Network Economics (WINE 2007), LNCS 4858, Springer Verlag, San Diego, USA, pages 232-244, December 2007.
Journal: [pdf] Internet Mathematics. Volume 5, Number 4 (2008), 395-410. (Special Issue for Selected papers from WINE'07.)

A Strategic Model for Information Markets [ps], [pdf]
Evdokia Nikolova, Rahul Sami.
In Proceedings of Eighth ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC '07), San Diego, CA, June 2007.

Betting on Permutations [ps], [pdf]
Yiling Chen, Lance Fortnow, Evdokia Nikolova, David Pennock.
In Proceedings of Eighth ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC '07), San Diego, CA, June 2007.

Stochastic Shortest Paths via Quasi-Convex Maximization [ps], [pdf]
Evdokia Nikolova, Jonathan Kelner, Matthew Brand and Michael Mitzenmacher.
In Proceedings of 2006 European Symposium of Algorithms (ESA '06), Zurich, Sep 2006.

Optimal Route Planning under Uncertainty [ps], [pdf]
Evdokia Nikolova, Matthew Brand, and David Karger.
In Proceedings of 2006 International Conference on Automated Planning & Scheduling (ICAPS 2006), Lake District, England, June 2006.

VCG Overpayment in Random Graphs [ps], [pdf]
David Karger, Evdokia Nikolova.
Brief Announcement in PODC 2005, Las Vegas, July '05. [ps], [pdf]
Conference on Decision and Control (CDC '06), San Diego, CA, December '06. [ps], [pdf]
DIMACS Workshop on Computational Issues in Auction Design, October 2004, Rutgers University.

First-Price Procurement Auctions
Nicole Immorlica, David Karger, Evdokia Nikolova, and Rahul Sami. First-Price Path Auctions.
Conference: [pdf] (with title First-Price Path Auctions) In Proceedings of Sixth ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC '05), Vancouver, June 2005.
Full version: [pdf]

Surveys

Combinatorial Betting [ps], [pdf]
Yiling Chen, Lance Fortnow, Evdokia Nikolova, David Pennock.
To appear in Proceedings of SIGecom Exchanges special issue on combinatorial auctions.

Theses

Strategic Algorithms. [pdf]
Evdokia Nikolova.
Ph.D. Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2009.

Duality of the Gradient Method and Lyapunov Functions in the context of Congestion Control. [ps] [pdf]
Evdokia Nikolova.
Math Tripos Essay, Cambridge University, 2003.

*Small Print
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Teaching

Spring 2013: CSCE 411H: Design and Analysis of Algorithms

Fall 2012: CSCE 629: Analysis of Algorithms

Spring 2012: CSCE 689: Special Topics in Algorithmic Game Theory (Syllabus pdf)

Fall 2011: CSCE 689: Special Topics in Stochastic and Risk-averse Optimization (Syllabus pdf)


Service

Program Committees: EC 2013, AAAI 2013, EC 2012, WWW 2012, EC 2010.

Workshop Organizer: ACM EC 2012 Workshop on Risk Aversion in Algorithmic Game Theory and Mechanism Design.

Invited Session Chair: ISMP 2012, ISMP 2009.


Funding

I gratefully acknowledge the following grants whose financial support has made my research possible:

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