INFORMS Open Forum

MD4SG '19

Call for Participation 

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The 3rd Workshop on Mechanism Design for Social Good (MD4SG '19) will take place at this year's ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC '19) in Phoenix, AZ, USA on 28 June 2019.

The goal of the workshop is to highlight work where techniques from algorithms, optimization, and mechanism design, along with insights from other disciplines, have the potential to improve access to opportunity for historically underserved and marginalized communities. The workshop will feature keynote presentations, contributed talks, problem pitches and demonstrations, a poster session, and a panel discussion, with a focus on bridging research and practice. 

We solicit submissions of research papers, as well as special problem- and practice-driven submissions, to be presented at the workshop. The deadline for submissions is 27 April 2019 at 5 PM GMT.

We also solicit applications for travel grants. The deadline for travel grant applications is 15 April 2019 at 5 PM GMT.

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We encourage submissions from across various disciplines and covering domains including bias and discrimination, civic participation, computational sustainability, developing nations, economic inequality, education, healthcare, housing, on- and off-line labor markets, and privacy and security. Submissions can be research papers introducing new theory or applications, as well as position papers synthesizing existing work and perspectives or highlighting future directions. For the first time, the workshop will also accept problem pitches and demonstration submissions. Submissions will fall into one of four tracks: 

1. AI and Machine Learning including bias, fairness, and ethics, fair division and resource allocation, human computer interaction in socio-technical systems; multi-agent systems, privacy and security, social choice theory, and statistical reasoning. 

2. Empirical Studies including applied machine learning, causal inference, computational social science, empirical analysis of real-world systems, empirical methods, and experimental results.

3. Theory including algorithm design, fair division and resource allocation, game theory, market and mechanism design, optimization, operations management, computational social choice, social network analysis, and theory of machine learning.  

In addition, we will also accept special submissions as problem pitches or demonstrations. We especially encourage individuals from government and non-government organizations and industry to submit to this track. 

4. Problems and Demonstrations: 

a. Problem Pitches including white papers on problems arising in practice that deserve wider academic attention, and papers pitching methods for addressing real-world problems through research. Submissions should provide (1) background information on the problems, (2) examples of how techniques for resource allocation, definition of appropriate metrics and objectives, design of systems, alignment of incentives, and related issues could significantly alleviate these problems, and (3) a summary of any existing methods or approaches for addressing these problems. Submissions are also encouraged to provide a discussion of challenges in providing holistic solutions and/or introduce new methods for addressing the problems.

Submissions will be evaluated based on their contributions to one or more of the following:

For all submissions, topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• market and mechanism design challenges in resource-constrained settings
• measuring and evaluating progress to achieve sustainable development goals  
• reducing inefficiencies in smallholder farms and under-resourced supply chains
• allocating health insurance funds and managing access to healthcare
• equitable provision of healthcare across communities
• algorithmic proposals to encourage civic participation
• evaluating fairness in electoral representation
• redistributive mechanisms to improve access to opportunity
• economic inequality and intergenerational mobility
• mitigating unequal economic outcomes in on- and off-line labor markets
• detecting existence or causes of exploitative market behavior in on- and off-line labor markets
• the design of algorithms that mitigate bias and improve diversity
• allocating low-income housing assistance
• evaluating students, teachers, or schools and improving allocation of educational resources
• design of transportation systems
• market regulations for data and privacy
• ethics of using solutions informed by algorithm and mechanism design in public sector settings

Submissions will be evaluated based on the following criteria:

• Quality of submission as measured by accuracy and clarity of exposition.
• Relevance to MD4SG and the workshop theme of bridging research and practice.
• Novelty of domain, especially work on applications that have historically been less explored by those in the EC community.
• In line with the focus on bridging research and practice, submissions will also be evaluated based on either: 
• Potential for interdisciplinary follow-up work. We welcome submissions with the potential to spark interdisciplinary collaborations with the EC community, 
• Presentation of domain-specific knowledge. We especially welcome practitioners with interest or experience in translating between practical problems and academic research approaches.

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Authors should upload a PDF of their paper to EasyChair. There are no specific formatting instructions or length requirements. In addition to the PDF, authors are asked to upload a 200-250 word description onto EasyChair summarizing their submission and its relevance to the workshop. Authors do not need to be first author of the submitted work. Authors should list all co-authors on the presented work both in the PDF of the submission as well as on EasyChair.  

Authors may submit papers that are working papers, papers that have already been published, or are under review. If the work is already published, please include a citation on EasyChair. 

There will be no published proceedings. All submissions will be peer-reviewed by at least 2 reviewers. The committee reserves the right not to review all the technical details of submissions. Submissions are single-blind (i.e., authors should include their name and affiliation in the paper). 

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The workshop will provide a number of need-based travel grants to participants to subsidize the costs of registration, travel, and accommodation at the workshop. Awardees of the travel grants will have the opportunity to participate in an interdisciplinary networking session with members of the broader MD4SG and EC community. Preference will be given to individuals who have submitted papers to the workshop or the EC conference before the travel grant submission deadline. We especially encourage those from underrepresented communities and institutions to submit a travel grant application. 

All travel grant applications must be submitted by 15 April 2019 at 5 PM GMT; applications received after this date will not be considered.

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• Travel Grant Application Deadline: 15 April 2019 at 5 PM GMT
• Paper Submission Deadline: 27 April 2019 at 5 PM GMT
• Notification: 15 May 2019
• Workshop Date: 28 June 2019
• Travel Grant: Application Form
• Paper Submission: EasyChair

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• Rediet Abebe, Cornell University
• Irene Lo, Stanford University

• Theory: Hamsa Bastani, Wharton, University of Pennsylvania; Kira Goldner, University of Washington
• Empirical Studies: Daniel Waldinger, New York University
• AI and ML: Sanmay Das, Washington University in St. Louis 
• Problems and Demos: Sera Linardi, University of Pittsburgh