报告时间：2026年10月14日 10:00开始

报 告 人：李闽溟 教授（香港城市大学）

报告地点：9-218

报告题目：Mechanism Design for Efficient Task Allocation

报告摘要：Task allocation involves a group of agents contributing to various tasks and has been well-studied in resource allocation and related fields. In many scenarios, tasks are distributed across different areas, such as medical jobs in urban and rural regions, and sometimes different tasks require different skill sets. A key challenge is the tendency of agents to choose easier tasks or more prosperous areas for their own benefit. This self-interest can create imbalances, leaving challenging tasks undone or leading to uneven resource distribution, such as the shortage of rural doctors. To address this problem, we study task allocation using a game-theoretic approach. We model the problem as task allocation games with different tasks and a group of rational, identical agents who strategically select tasks to minimize their workloads. Our goal is to design mechanisms that ensure all workloads are completed in every Nash equilibrium. We show that achieving this requires implementing positive or negative incentives. We then propose effective mechanisms that leverage both types of incentives and extend our results to scenarios with multiple tasks and heterogeneous agents.

报告人简介：Minming Li is a Professor in Department of Computer Science, City University of Hong Kong. He received his Ph. D. and B.E. degree in the Department of Computer Science and Technology at Tsinghua University in 2006 and 2002 respectively. His research interests include algorithmic game theory, combinatorial optimization and  algorithm design and analysis for scheduling problems. He has been consistently working on the theoretical aspects of computer science with a wide scope of application background. The full publication can be found at https://dblp.org/pid/78/6881.html

He is serving as associate editors for a number of journals including Journal of AI Research, JAAMAS, Journal of Scheduling and Journal of Combinatorial Optimization. He has also served as chairperson of ACM Hong Kong Chapter from 2016 to 2018. He was a recipient of Teaching Excellence Award given by City University of Hong Kong and Outstanding Supervisor Award. Currently he is ACM Distinguished Speaker.