AurosishMishra

My current research interests lie broadly in the area of Algorithms, Social Networks and Game Theory. In my first year at Cornell, I have worked primarily on Algorithmic Game Theory, with a special focus on Sponsored Search and Auction Theory. I love to analyze day-to-day scenarios from a game-theoretic perspective - even applying those notions in card games, board games and restaurant orders (much to the delight, sometimes chagrin, of my friends). I am also quite captivated by the application of graph theory in social-network analyses, viz. designing recommendation systems, studying epidemic models, understanding social relationships better, etc. Recently, I have also garnered interest in scalable database design and data privacy.

This project is an attempt to perform a rigorous analysis of the segregation model proposed by Thomas Schelling in 1973. In his work, Schelling suggested that local segregation preferences will lead to global segregation. We look at the 1-D Schelling model and try to understand the behaviour of the system dynamics with varying levels of local preferences.
Status: Ongoing (joint work with Bruno Abrahao, Prof. Robert Kleinberg)

In this project, we explore games having both collaborative and competitive elements with a motivating example: researchers competing to have their papers accepted in prestigious conferences. We use the concept of contractual stability developed in cooperative game theory, and derive Price of Anarchy-like bounds for a class of games with superadditive utilities for coalitions and fair sharing of utilities among individuals in a coalition.
Status: Ongoing (joint work with Adith Swaminathan)

In this project, we studied the effect of broad match keywords on sponsored search. Each of the keywords has a homogeneous packaging of search terms with respect to advertiser valuations. Assuming a laminar hierarchy of keywords, we obtained an improved Price of Anarchy bound which depends linearly on the homogeneity parameter.
Status: Submitted to WINE 2012 (joint work with Prof. Eva Tardos)

H-coloring problems for digraphs are either polynomial or NP-complete depending on the degree bounds. We investigate this dichotomy of H-coloring for bounded degree digraphs and provide a neat characterization of the problem by focusing on the two smallest digraphs with NP-complete general H-colorability problems.
Status: Manuscript under preparation (joint work with Prof. Pavol Hell)

In this project, we worked on Wireless Localization restricted to vertex guards. Given a simple polygon P, the problem involves placing guards, each broadcasting a unique key within a fixed angular range, on the polygon vertices, such that we can classify any point as inside or outside P based on the keys received. We obtained improved sub-linear bounds on the number of guards.
Status: Published in EuroCG 2011(joint work with Tobias Christ, Michael Hoffmann)

This project involved developing a user-friendly and adaptable "Smart Parking System" in order to alleviate parking hassles in large multi-level parking garages. The design involved placing magnetic sensors in the parking lots that would detect vehicles and communicate with a central base station, which in turn, would update the parking lot guidance system.
Status: Demo given in SPANN Lab (joint work with Prof. Uday Desai)