Computational Sustainability Virtual Seminar #10

Fei Fang, Friday, May 5, 1:30 EDT, 5:30 UTC

Computational Sustainability Seminar #10
Title: Game-Theoretic Approaches for Sustainability Challenges

Abstract: The framework of game theory can be powerful when addressing resource allocation problems in security and sustainability domains, e.g., protecting critical infrastructure and cyber network, and protecting wildlife, fishery, and forest. Motivated by these problems, I propose models and algorithms to handle massive games with complex spatio-temporal settings, leading to real-world applications that have fundamentally altered current practices of security resource allocation. In this talk, I will focus on my work motivated by environmental sustainability challenges. First, for problems with repeated interaction such as preventing poaching and illegal fishing, I introduce the green security game model which accounts for adversaries' behavior change and provide algorithms to plan effective sequential defender strategies. Second, I incorporate complex terrain information and design PAWS (Protection Assistant for Wildlife Security) which generates patrol routes to combat poaching. PAWS has been deployed in Southeast Asia for tiger conservation. In addition, I will cover our recent work on adversary behavior modeling and forecasting with real-world poaching data.

Bio:Fei Fang is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Research on Computation and Society (CRCS), Harvard University and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Institute for Software Research at Carnegie Mellon University. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California in June 2016, advised by Professor Milind Tambe. She received her bachelor degree from the Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University in July 2011.

Her research lies in the field of artificial intelligence and multi-agent systems, focusing on computational game theory with applications to security and sustainability domains. Her dissertation is selected as the runner-up for IFAAMAS-16 Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award. Her work has won the Innovative Application Award at Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI’16), the Outstanding Paper Award in Computational Sustainability Track at the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI’15). Her work on “Protecting Moving Targets with Mobile Resources” has been deployed by the US Coast Guard for protecting the Staten Island Ferry in New York City since April 2013. Her work on designing patrol strategies to combat illegal poaching has lead to the deployment of PAWS application in a conservation area in Southeast Asia for protecting tigers.