How should groups make decisions, and how can we support such decision-making processes? How should groups be formed to be effective? These questions motivate our research. To this effect we have formed a multi-disciplinary group of researchers who specialize in the areas of computer science, decision-theory, decision-support systems, game theory, and economics. In an attempt to make current tools and theoretical work more aligned with the needs of applications, we will focus on four important topics for group decision- making: (1) Obtaining and representing preferences of group members. This is a well-recognized bottleneck for decision-making because of the difficult cognitive requirements it places on individuals. (2) Efficiently solving games. Game theory is the primary mathematical tool used to model and understand group decision-making and group formation. Solutions to games are used to explain and to recommend social behavior, but computing such solutions is a notoriously difficulty problem. (3) Group and team formation. Given a group of people with different capabilities, how does one select the best team for handling a given task? Current methods are very limited in how they model such problems, e.g., they do not model negative interactions between group members. (4) Adaptive behavior. When the situation is dynamic and uncertain, decision makers need to adapt quickly - what algorithms should they use?
The PIs have already made important contributions to these areas. This research program promises to push the envelopes of current scientific knowledge on the above issues, providing new and more efficient algorithms and more advanced models. Such results can have substantial benefit to society by helping government organizations and private corporations make better decisions, better adapt to change, and understand how to form more effective task forces and committees, and by providing them with tools that can support these decision making processes.
