Сандомирский Федор Алексеевич, старший научный сотрудник Международной лаборатории теории игр и принятия решений НИУ ВШЭ в Санкт-Петербурге

НОМИНАЦИЯ «Достижение в науке»

Сандомирский Федор Алексеевич

Nominated for brilliant results in Game Theory and Mechanism Design

Кандидатуру предлагает коллектив Международной лаборатории теории игр и принятия решений НИУ ВШЭ в Санкт-Петербурге и лично Эрве Мулен

Fedor Sandomirsky is a brilliant young researcher. In 2013 he completed his Candidate of Sciences thesis in just two years after completing his University degree in physics (with honor). In his thesis, using a novel approach based on a combination of Kantorovich's optimal transportation theory and martingale-optimization methods, Fedor characterized the value of information in a wide class of repeated games in terms of easily verifiable properties of the one-stage game.

This result has no analogue in the literature both by its generality and applicability to particular games. Fedor was awarded the Ovsievich prize for this work. It is no surprise that this breakthrough in understanding of the strategic use of information in multistage interactions was recognized as outstanding by the board on recommendation of Acad. Polterovich.

In the summer 2015 Fedor joined the newly formed Laboratory of Game Theory and Decision Making at HSE St.-Petersburg, where he immediately achieved several important results on mechanism design. His joint work with H. Moulin, A. Bogomolnaia, and E. Yanovskaya identifies computationally tractable methods to divide a “manna” containing both (desirable) goods and (undesirable) bads. These are immediately applicable in free internet platforms like SPLIDDIT helping real people solve real fair division issues. His co-authors were impressed by how fast Fedor developed a keen economic intuition for the model, and applied his superior mathematical skills to provide some of the most difficult proofs.

The above work produced two papers, one of them was accepted in Econometrica in August 2017 (as far as we know it is the third ever publication in TOP-5 journals in economics in the HSE), and the other is currently submitted. Moreover in 2014-2017, Fedor published without coauthors two papers in Q1 journals, one physics paper with coauthor in Q1, and one more paper (with coauthors) is submitted to a Q1 journal. All his papers combine original approaches with careful attention to details. “Quality in everything” describes them well.

In addition to his very strong research record, Fedor actively initiated students’ research projects on fair division, algorithmic game theory, strategic information transmission, dynamic matching mechanisms, etc... These collaborations will surely result in several good publications.

He also showed strong skills for academic organization: for instance he was the main force putting together two international conferences, held on the HSE campus and gathering dozens of world-level researchers. These events confirmed his growing stature in the game theory community.

Last but not least, this year Fedor and Alexander Nesterov developed a course on Mechanism Design (it is a required course for economists), which they teach to master students of HSE Saint-Petersburg. Recognized by two Nobel Prizes, in 1996 and 2007, mechanism design focuses on the impact of dispersed private information on the functioning of economic and social organizations; it has been key to the adoption of new action and voting rules, new protocols to assign high school students to schools, and more effective distribution of live organs for transplants. The HSE students are very lucky to be offered such a course by someone of Fedor’s caliber.