Research interests: (Approximation) Algorithms, Combinatorial Optimization, Game Theory and Mechanism Design. Special focus on algorithms for risk mitigation in networks, decision making under uncertainty, and applications to transportation and energy.

• Short bio

• Research group

• Talk videos

• Selected publications

• All publications

• Teaching

• Service

• Funding

• CV (last updated Apr. 2018)

News & Links

• Program co-chair for WINE 2019: The 15th Conference on Web and Internet Economics.

• Associate editor for Mathematics of Operations Research, Game Theory area. Please consider submitting your strongest papers there.

• I co-organized the Simons Institute Spring 2018 semester program on Real-Time Decision Making.

• I organized a reading group on Mechanism Design for the Smart Grid, Simons Institute, Berkeley, CA, Fall 2015.

• Co-organizer, Winedale Workshop, Winedale, Texas, October 17, 2014. Theme: Algorithmic Game Theory.

• Prof. Evdokia Nikolova Receives NSF CAREER Award

• Keynote speaker at Workshop on Eco Friendly Mobility: Concepts and Algorithms, Zurich, Switzerland, January 22-23, 2014.

• Co-organizer, Workshop on Risk Aversion in Algorithmic Game Theory and Mechanism Design, Valencia, Spain, June 7, 2012. Invited lecture by Garud Iyengar: Optimizing with Risk Measures

Short bio

Evdokia Nikolova is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, where she is a member of the Wireless Networking & Communications Group. She graduated with a BA in Applied Mathematics with Economics from Harvard University, MS in Mathematics from Cambridge University, U.K. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from MIT.

Evdokia Nikolova's research aims to improve the design and efficiency of complex systems (such as networks and electronic markets), by integrating stochastic, dynamic and economic analysis. Her recent work examines how human risk aversion transforms traditional computational models and solutions. One of her algorithms has been adapted in the MIT CarTel project for traffic-aware routing. She currently focuses on developing algorithms for risk mitigation in networks, with applications to transportation and energy. She is a recipient of an NSF CAREER award and a Google Faculty Research Award. Her research group has been recognized with a best student paper award and a best paper award runner-up. She currently serves on the editorial board of the journal Mathematics of Operations Research.

Research group

Alumni

• Emmanouil (Manolis) Pountourakis (Postdoctoral Scholar, April 2017 - August 2019, now Assistant Professor in Computer Science; Drexel University)

• Thanasis Lianeas (Postdoctoral Scholar, April 2015 - December 2017, now Lecturer at NTUA and AUEB, Greece)

• Soumya Basu (Ph.D. 2020, now Software Engineer at Google)

• Ger Yang (Ph.D. 2018, now Software Engineer at Google; Sunnyvale, CA)

Current

• Bo Li (Postdoctoral associate since July 2020)

• Ali Khodabakhsh (Ph.D. student since Fall 2015)

• Yutong Wu (Ph.D. student since Fall 2019)

• Joshua Ong (Ph.D. student starting Fall 2020)

Talk videos

• When Does Diversity of Agent Preferences Improve Outcomes in Selfish Routing [video]
  Mathematical and Computational Challenges in Real-Time Decision Making Workshop, Simons Institute, April 30th, 2018.
  

• Risk-Averse Selfish Routing [video]
  Societal Networks Workshop, Simons Institute, March 28th, 2018.
  

• A Brief Introduction to Algorithms, Game Theory and Risk-Averse Decision Making [video]
  Real-Time Decision Making Boot Camp, Simons Institute, January 24th, 2018.
  

• Network Pricing: How to Induce Optimal Flows Under Strategic Link Operators [video]
  Microsoft Research, June 26th, 2017.
  

Selected publications* (All publications in chronological order here)

Power Systems

• Electrical Flows over Spanning Trees [arXiv] (submitted)
  S. Gupta, A. Khodabakhsh, H. Mortagy, E. Nikolova.
  

• Electric Vehicle Valet [arXiv] (in preparation)
  A. Khodabakhsh, Y. Matuschke, J. Horn, E. Nikolova, E. Pountourakis.
  

• The Long-term Cost of Energy Generation [pdf][video]
  J. Horn, Y. Wu, A. Khodabakhsh, E. Nikolova, E. Pountourakis
  In Proceedings of ACM International Conference on Future Energy Systems (e-Energy), Melbourne, Australia, June 22-26, 2020.
  

• Prosumer Pricing, Incentives and Fairness [pdf]
  A. Khodabakhsh, J. Horn, E. Nikolova, E. Pountourakis.
  In Proceedings of ACM International Conference on Future Energy Systems (e-Energy), Phoenix, USA, June 25-28, 2019.
  

• A Submodular Approach for Electricity Distribution Network Reconfiguration [pdf]
  A. Khodabakhsh, G. Yang, S. Basu, E. Nikolova, M. C. Caramanis, T. Lianeas, M. Pountourakis
  In 51st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), Hawaii, USA, Jan. 3-6, 2018. (Best paper runner-up)
  

Algorithms, Game Theory and Mechanism Design

• Computing Multi-Modal Journey Plans under Uncertainty [pdf]
  Adi Botea, Akihiro Kishimoto, Evdokia Nikolova, Stefano Braghin, Michele Berlingerio, Elizabeth Daly.
  Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR), vol. 65, pp. 633-674, 2019.
  

• Optimal Mechanism Design with Risk-loving Agents [arXiv]
  Evdokia Nikolova, Ger Yang, Emmanouil Pountourakis.
  In Proceedings of the 14th Conference on Web and Internet Economics (WINE), 2018.
  

• Risk-averse selfish routing [pdf]
  Thanasis Lianeas, Evdokia Nikolova, Nicolas E. Stier Moses.
  Mathematics of Operations Research, vol. 44(1), pp. 38-57, 2018.
  

• Network Pricing: How to Induce Optimal Flows Under Strategic Link Operators [pdf] [video]
  Jose Correa, Cristobal Guzman, Thanasis Lianeas, Evdokia Nikolova and Marc Schroeder
  In Proceedings of the Nineteenth ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC'18). Ithaca, NY, June 19-21, 2018.
  

• When Does Diversity of Risk Attitudes Improve Outcomes in Selfish Routing? [arXiv]
  Richard Cole, Thanasis Lianeas and Evdokia Nikolova.
  In Proceedings of the 27th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI'18).
  

• A Mean-Risk Model for the Traffic Assignment Problem with Stochastic Travel Times [pdf]
  Evdokia Nikolova, Nicolas E. Stier Moses.
  Operations Research, 62:2, 366.382, 2014.
  

• Risk Sensitivity of Price of Anarchy under Uncertainty. [pdf]
  Georgios Piliouras, Evdokia Nikolova and Jeff S. Shamma.
  ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation (TEAC), Volume 5, Issue 1, November 2016, Article No. 5.
  (Extended abstract appeared in ACM EC 2013)
  

• Approximation Algorithms for Route Planning with Nonlinear Objectives. [arXiv]
  Ger Yang and Evdokia Nikolova.
  In Proceedings of the Thirtieth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI'16). Phoenix, Arizona, February 12–17, 2016.
  

• New Complexity Results and Algorithms for the Minimum Tollbooth Problem, [ArXiv]
  Soumya Basu, Thanasis Lianeas, Evdokia Nikolova.
  In proceedings of the 2015 Conference on Web and Internet Economics (WINE'15), Amsterdam, The Netherlands, December 9-12, 2015.
  

• The Burden of Risk Aversion in Mean-Risk Selfish Routing [ArXiv]
  Evdokia Nikolova, Nicolas E. Stier Moses.
  In Proceedings of the Sixteenth ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC'15). Portland, OR, June 15-19, 2015.
  

• Approximately Optimal Risk-averse Routing Policies via Adaptive Discretization. [pdf]
  Darrell Hoy and Evdokia Nikolova.
  In Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI'15). Austin, TX, January 25-30, 2015.
  

• Practical Route Planning Under Delay Uncertainty: Stochastic Shortest Path Queries [pdf]
  Sejoon Lim, Christian Sommer, Evdokia Nikolova, and Daniela Rus
  In RSS - Robotics: Science and Systems VIII, 2012.
  

• Approximation Algorithms for Offline Risk-averse Combinatorial Optimization
  Evdokia Nikolova.
  Full version: [pdf]
  Conference: [pdf] (with title Approximation Algorithms for Reliable Stochastic Combinatorial Optimization.) In Proceedings of APPROX '10, Barcelona, Spain, 2010.
  

Theses

• Strategic Algorithms. [pdf]
  Evdokia Nikolova.
  Ph.D. Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2009.
  

• Duality of the Gradient Method and Lyapunov Functions in the context of Congestion Control. [ps] [pdf]
  Evdokia Nikolova.
  Math Tripos Essay, Cambridge University, 2003.

*Small Print

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Teaching

Spring 2019: EE 381V: Game Theory. Course materials on Canvas. Syllabus

Fall 2017: EE 360C: Algorithms. Course materials on Canvas (two sections).

Spring 2017: EE 381V: Advanced algorithms. Course materials on Canvas.

Fall 2016: EE 360C: Algorithms. Course materials on Canvas.

Fall 2015: Mechanism Design for the Smart Grid, Simons Institute, Berkeley, CA

Spring 2015: EE 381V: Advanced algorithms. Course materials on Canvas. Syllabus

Fall 2014: EE 360C: Algorithms. Course materials on Canvas.

Spring 2014: EE 381V: Game Theory. Course materials on Blackboard.

Courses taught at Texas A&M University:

Fall 2013: CSCE 489/689: Special Topics in Algorithmic Game Theory

Spring 2013: CSCE 411H: Design and Analysis of Algorithms

Fall 2012: CSCE 629: Analysis of Algorithms

Spring 2012: CSCE 689: Special Topics in Algorithmic Game Theory

Fall 2011: CSCE 689: Special Topics in Stochastic and Risk-averse Optimization

Service

Program Co-chair: WINE 2019.

Editorial Board: Mathematics of Operations Research.

Program Committees: EC 2018, ESA 2017, EC 2017, WWW 2017, AAAI 2017, AAAI 2016, WINE 2015, EC 2014, EC 2013, AAAI 2013, EC 2012, WWW 2012, EC 2010.

Workshop Co-organizer:

• Mathematical and Computational Challenges in Real-Time Decision Making, Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing. Berkeley, CA, Spring, 2018.

• Real-Time Decision Making, Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing. Berkeley, CA, Jun. 27 - Jul. 1, 2016.

• Winedale Workshop, Theme: Algorithmic Game Theory. Winedale, Texas, October 17, 2014.

• ACM EC 2012 Workshop on Risk Aversion in Algorithmic Game Theory and Mechanism Design, Valencia, Spain, June 7, 2012.

Invited Session Chair: ISMP 2015, ISMP 2012, ISMP 2009.

Outreach:

• Co-taught the Edison Lecture Series to over 1000 middle-school and high-school students on Feb. 11-12, 2016, Austin, TX.

• Speaker at Camp Texas (for incoming UT freshmen), Camp Balcones Springs, Texas, August 17, 2014; August 18, 2015; August 16, 2016.

Funding

I gratefully acknowledge the following grants whose financial support makes my research possible:

• NSF CCF 1733832: AitF: Collaborative Research: Algorithms and Mechanisms for the Distribution Grid

• NSF CCF 1350823: CAREER: Algorithms for Risk Mitigation in Networks

• NSF CCF 1216103: Risk Aversion in Algorithmic Game Theory and Mechanism Design

• NSF CCF 1331863: Collaborative Research: CyberSEES: Coupon Incentive-based Risk Aware Demand Response in Smart Grid

• Google Research Award, 2013.