Design Principles for Networked Communities

This research addresses the design of interactions between
agents in networked communities. When the communities are composed of
compliant machines, network utility maximization (NUM) and other
methods can be used to achieve efficient outcomes. When the
communities are composed of intelligent and self-interested agents
(multimedia peer-to-peer networks, social networks, etc.), such
methods are not effective and efficiency is much more difficult to
achieve because the interests of the individual agents may be in
conflict. This talk describes design principles to achieve efficient
outcomes in such networks based on the use of incentives (rewards and
punishments). Depending on the characteristics of the network, the
community, and the capacity of the designer, the application of these
principles may be through any of a number of various mechanisms. This
talk discusses mechanisms based on social norms, direct reciprocation,
and pricing.
Mihaela van der Schaar is Professor in the Electrical Engineering
Department at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research
interests include multimedia networking, communication, processing and
systems, multi-user communication networks, online learning, network
economics and game theory. She is an IEEE Fellow, a Distinguished
Lecturer of the Communications Society, the Editor in Chief of IEEE
Transactions on Multimedia and a member of the Editorial Board of the
IEEE Journal on Selected Topics in Signal Processing. She received an
NSF CAREER Award (2004), the Best Paper Award from IEEE Transactions
on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology (2005), the Okawa
Foundation Award (2006), the IBM Faculty Award (2005, 2007, 2008), and
the Most Cited Paper Award from EURASIP: Image Communications Journal
(2006). She was formerly an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on
Multimedia, Signal Processing Letters, Circuits and Systems for Video
Technology, Signal Processing Magazine etc. She received three ISO
awards for her contributions to the MPEG video compression and
streaming international standardization activities, and holds 33
granted US patents. For more information about her research see:
http://medianetlab.ee.ucla.edu/