Spring 2022 Emeriti Lecture with Phokion G. Kolaitis

Some Aspects of Computational Social Choice

Phokion G. Kolaitis, Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus Computer Science and Engineering

Social choice theory is concerned with the study of methods for collective decision making.  Computational social choice is an interdisciplinary field at the interface of social choice theory and computer science that applies the algorithmic lens to collective decision making. The main aim of this talk is to present an overview of some aspects of computational social choice with emphasis on the computational complexity of determining the winners under various voting rules and when only incomplete information about the preferences of voters is available.

Phokion Kolaitis is a Distinguished Research Professor at UC Santa Cruz and a Principal Research Staff Member at the IBM Almaden Research Center. His research interests include principles of database systems, logic in computer science, and computational complexity. Kolaitis joined the UCSC faculty in 1988, nine years before the founding of the Baskin School of Engineering; he served as chair of the Computer Science Department for a total of five years.

Kolaitis is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, and the recipient of a 1993 Guggenheim Fellowship. His work has been recognized with several awards, including three different test-of-time awards. At present, Kolaitis serves as President of the Association for Symbolic Logic.