PhD students Saeed Seddighin and Pan Xu awarded Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowships

Ph.D. Students Saeed Seddighin and Pan Xu will be two recipients of the Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship for 2018. 

Saeed Seddighin works in theoretical computer science and is advised by Professor MohammadTaghi Hajiaghayi.  Seddighin's most recent papers are entitled "Fast Algorithms for Knapsack via Convolution and Prediction," "From Battlefields to Presidential Elections: Winning Strategies of Blotto and Auditing Games," and "Approximating Edit Distance in Truly Subquadratic Time: Quantum and MapReduce," all which were given at the ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA) in 2018.

Pan Xu works at the intersection of Theoretical Computer Science, Operations Research, and Artificial Intelligence. He is interested in various stochastic optimization problems arising in E-commerce, the Internet advertising, crowdsourcing markets, data mining, databases, and revenue management. His expertise lies in the interface of Randomized Algorithms, Probabilistic Methods,  Stochastic Optimization and Applied AI. Xu is advised by Professor Aravind Srinivasan and Assistant Professor John Dickerson.  His most recent papers include "Assigning Tasks to Workers based on Historical Data: Online Task Assignment with Two-sided Arrivals," with John Dickerson, Karthik A. Sankararaman and Aravind Srinivasan, which will appear in AAMAS 18; "Allocation Problems in Ride-Sharing Platforms: Online Matching with Offline Reusable Resources," with John Dickerson, Karthik A. Sankararaman and Aravind Srinivasan which will appear in AAAI 18; and "Algorithms to Approximate Column-Sparse Packing Programs," with Brian Brubach, Karthik A. Sankararaman and Aravind Srinivasan, which appeared at ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA) 18.

***

About the Ann G. Wylie Disseration Fellowship:

The Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship supports students with excellent qualifications who are in the latter stages of writing their dissertations.  The Graduate School is pleased to provide you with full support for one semester and we are confident that it will help you progress toward your degree.

The Fellowship carries a $15,000 stipend, a candidacy tuition award, and a credit for mandatory fees for one semester. In addition, you may request up to a $1,000 reimbursement for the purchase of individual health insurance.  Wylie Fellows are expected to devote full attention to their dissertations. The Wylie Fellowship is a full-time fellowship and cannot be combined with other financial support from the University, other fellowships, or off-campus employment that amounts to more than $2,000.