Vincent Conitzer Receives Social Choice and Welfare Prize

Vincent Conitzer Receives Social Choice and Welfare Prize

19 June 2014 11:11AM

Professor Vincent Contizer has been awarded the seventh Social Choice and Welfare Prize for his contributions in the field of computational social choice. The award honors young scholars below the age of 40 for excellent accomplishment in the area of social choice theory and welfare economics.

Conitzer was selected “for his research bringing together computer science and social choice theory,” according to Professor Bhaskar Dutta, president-elect of the Society for Social Choice and Welfare.

 

He is being honored jointly with Associate Professor Tim Roughgarden of Stanford University for 2014, and they will each give a one-hour lecture at the 12th International Meeting of the Society for Social Choice and Welfare on June 21, 2014 at Boston College. Conitzer and Roughgarden are the first computer scientists to receive the prize.

 

“The list of previous winners includes some extremely accomplished people, and I feel very honored to be included in that list together with Tim,” said Conitzer. “I surely would not have received the prize without the amazing students and postdocs who have been and continue to be in my research group.”

 

His work in this area applies computer science to the study of social choice mechanisms, specifically voting procedures. Conitzer’s  research has sought to determine and address critical issues, such as how computationally difficult it is to manipulate voting rules by misrepresenting one’s preferences, and how bad voting outcomes can be due to voters voting strategically.

 

Conitzer is a Sally Dalton Robinson Professor of Computer Science and a Professor of Economics at Duke University.