Research interests 

Algorithms and theoretical computer science. Specific topics include:

• networks: Internet and peer-to-peer networks, social and financial networks
• online machine learning,
  and its applications to e-commerce, web search, and human computation
• algorithmic economics
• metric spaces and metric embeddings.

In addition to my core interests as a theorist, I enjoy collaborating on experimental and empirical projects in the above areas.

A common theme in my work is that an algorithm faces informational constraints: some of the pertinent information is not available. This theme arises in many domains for reasons that include uncertainty, information arriving over time, strategic behavior, and massive data. My work is aimed at designing natural and implementable algorithms for these domains, and deriving general mathematical conditions under which provable guarantees can be obtained.

Education and employment

• Researcher, Microsoft Research Silicon Valley, 2007 - present.
• Visiting Scientist, Dept of Computer Science, Cornell University, Spring 2011.
• Postdoc at Brown University, 2006-2007, with Eli Upfal.
• Ph.D. Computer Science, Cornell University, 2000-2006.
  Thesis committee: Jon Kleinberg (advisor), Gun Sirer and Eva Tardos.
  Thesis: Embedding, Distance Estimation and Object Location in Networks.
• B.S. Mathematics (with distinction), California Inst. of Technology, 1996-2000.

Service

• Program committees: ACM EC 2013, WWW 2012,  ACM EC 2012, WWW 2011, ACM EC 2011, ICML 2011, AdAuctions 2010, ACM PODC 2007.

Projects at MSR  

• Multi-Armed Bandits, Social Algorithms, Computational Game Theory.

Selected publications

• Low-distortion Inference of Latent Similarities from a Multiplex Social Network
  Ittai Abraham, Shiri Chechik, David Kempe and Aleksandrs Slivkins
  SODA 2013: ACM-SIAM Symp. on Discrete Algorithms
• Truthful Mechanisms with Implicit Payment Computation
  Moshe Babaioff, Robert Kleinberg and Aleksandrs Slivkins.
  EC 2010: ACM Symp. on Electronic Commerce (Best paper award).
• Sharp Dichotomies for Regret Minimization in Metric Spaces
  Robert Kleinberg and Aleksandrs Slivkins.
  SODA 2010: ACM-SIAM Symp. on Discrete Algorithms.
• Multi-armed Bandits in Metric Spaces
  Robert Kleinberg, Aleksandrs Slivkins and Eli Upfal.
  STOC 2008: ACM Symp. on Theory of Computing.
• Meridian: A Lightweight Network Location Service without Virtual Coordinates
  Bernard Wong, Aleksandrs Slivkins and Emin G. Sirer.
  ACM SIGCOMM 2005.
• Metric Embeddings with Relaxed Guarantees
  T-H.H. Chan, K. Dhamdhere, A. Gupta, J. Kleinberg and A. Slivkins.
  SIAM J. on Computing, 38(6): 2303-2329, March 2009.
  FOCS 2005: IEEE Symp. on Foundations of Computer Science.
• Triangulation and Embedding using Small Sets of Beacons
  Jon Kleinberg, Aleksandrs Slivkins and Tom Wexler.
  J. of the ACM, 56(6), Sept 2009.
  FOCS 2004: IEEE Symp. on Foundations of Computer Science.
• Network Failure Detection and Graph Connectivity
  Jon Kleinberg, Mark Sandler and Aleksandrs Slivkins.
  SIAM J. on Computing, 38(4): 1330-1346, Aug 2008.
  SODA 2004: ACM-SIAM Symp. on Discrete Algorithms.

Former interns

Sigal Oren (2011)
Shiri Chechik (2010)
Yogeshwer Sharma (2008)

Contact info

Aleksandrs Slivkins
Mail: Microsoft Corporation, 1065 La Avenida, Mountain View, CA 94043
Email: [lastname] at microsoft dot com
Phone: (650) 693-1195
Fax: (650) 693-3329, "Attn: slivkins at (650) 693-1195"