4-year PhD position at Delft University of Technology in the field of Multi-Agent Negotiations

This position is part of the SHINE (Social Heterogeneous Information Network Environment) project and will be performed as a cooperation between the Man-Machine Interaction and Algorithmics research groups at the Faculty Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science. The daily supervisor is Dr. Mathijs de Weerdt and the promotors are Prof. Dr. Catholijn Jonker and Prof. Dr. Cees Witteveen.

To meet the early application deadline please apply before November 30. Submissions received after November 30th will be also considered until the position has been filled.

PhD project description

A network of autonomous systems can pursue several goals at once (possibly even combining some of the results). These goals are based upon requests by the owners of the resources in the system. We assume that there are more requests than what actually can be achieved. In this subproject of SHINE we study how to best select requests for pursuit, acceptable to the resource owners.

From the literature on game theory it is known that in general there is no way to always reach an optimal solution. However, it is known that so-called generalized Vickrey auctions can do so under specific conditions. Alternatively, multi-party negotiations may be used such that there is less need for a centralized controller. Negotiations are more flexible and expressive, while auctions are generally more efficient.

The main research challenge here is to combine the advantages of auctions and negotiations to enable (near) optimal solutions in a decentralized manner. A second challenge in this subproject is to deal with the dynamic nature of the problem domain. New (high-priority) goals may come up, while others may become irrelevant. Thirdly, it is an open question whether it is possible to arrive at a fair allocation over time without a reward structure.

This subproject is one of the five PhD projects within SHINE. The main research question of SHINE is the following: "How can heterogeneous resources (people, mobile sensors, fixed sensors, social media, information systems, ...) self-organize for answering dynamic information needs?"

Within SHINE, it is the role of this subproject to develop a negotiation mechanism to select information needs to answer out of the possibly many received requests.

Requirements

As a PhD student your tasks concern the following activities:
* perform scientific research;
* implement research prototypes and test them in live settings;
* present results on international conferences;
* publish results in scientific journals;
* participate in activities of the research groups.

We are looking for excellent candidates who meet the following requirements:
* a MSc degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Mathematics, Economics, or a closely related field;
* good programming skills;
* good speaking and writing skills in English or Dutch.
Having some background in multi-agent systems, negotiation, game theory, or algorithm design is a plus.

The application should consist of the following parts
* an explanation of your interest in the proposed research field;
* a Curriculum Vitae;
* copies of diplomas together and other relevant certificates;
* a complete list of attended courses and corresponding grades;
* names and contact details of two referees;
* proof of language skills (if applicable).

Please send us your application before November 30th - the date when we start the selection process.

Additional information

More information can be obtained from: Dr. Mathijs de Weerdt, tel: +31 (015) 27 84516, email: M.M.deWeerdt at tudelft.nl or Prof.Dr. Catholijn Jonker, email: C.M.Jonker at tudelft.nl.