Abstract

Mechanism design engineers games achieving a social desideratum when played by selfish players. But this beautiful line of research has so far required a few oversimplifications, casting legitimate doubts on the relevance of its solutions. We show that integrating notion and techniques of theoretical computer science and game theory yields a more ambitious, realistic, and robust approach to mechanism design: indeed, an approach better able to meet the new design challenges of our world.

Biography

 Silvio Micali is the Dougald Jackson Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT.

His research interests are cryptography, zero knowledge, pseudo-random generation, secure protocols, and mechanism design.

Silvio is the recipient of the Goedel Prize (in theoretical computer science) and the RSA prize (in cryptography). He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.