Alan Deckelbaum, PhD
2009 Hertz Fellow
Alan Deckelbaum is a researcher for Renaissance Technologies. As a Hertz Foundation Fellow, Alan received his PhD in applied mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His thesis studied two problems in auction design. It is motivated by real-world applications such as online auctions and governmental allocation of resources. The bulk of the work asks how an auctioneer can maximize expected revenue when he has probabilistic information about bidders’ values for each item and reveals a connection between auction design and optimal transport theory. This connection between seemingly disparate fields paves the way for many future avenues of economic and mathematical research.
"The Hertz Fellowship pushed me to realize the importance for theoretical work to have overarching practical motivations and to ask where I can apply the trajectory of what I’ve learned. My connections with Hertz fellows will continue to be invaluable in the years to come."
Graduate Studies
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Mathematics,
Computer Science
The Structure of Auctions: Optimality and Efficiency
Undergraduate Studies
Massachusetts Institute of Technology