Research

John is a Ph.D. candidate in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University, where he works in the Electronic Marketplaces Lab with his advisor Tuomas Sandholm. John’s research is at the intersection of computer science and economics, with a focus on solving practical economic problems using stochastic optimization and machine learning.

Research Summary

John is especially interested in using principled algorithmic techniques to better inform market design decisions. For example,much of his current research focuses on kidney exchange, a recent innovation where patients in need of a kidney transplant swap willing but incompatible donors. Viewed through the lens of computer science and economics, the process of optimally matching prospective donors to patients requires quantitatively balancing concerns like equity and efficiency,creating scalable algorithms that provide sensitivity analysis offline and power the fielded systems online, and making modeling decisions based on input from both the various involved parties (surgeons, centers, ethicists, economists, lawyers) and computational theory and simulation. John is the lead graduate student developing such algorithms and software that run the UNOS nationwide kidney exchange, which currently includes over 143 transplant centers.