School of Mathematics Public Lecture with Timothy Roughgarden
Computer Science and Game Theory: A Conversation
Wolfensohn Hall
Wednesday, November 19, 2025
5:00 p.m.

The fields of computer science and game theory both trace their roots to the first half of the 20th century, with the work of Turing, von Neumann, Nash, and others. The 21st century has seen many fruitful points of contact between these two fields. Game theory and economics play an important role in modern computer science applications, ranging from routing in the Internet to transaction pricing in blockchain protocols. The flow of ideas also travels in the other direction, with computer science offering a number of tools to reason about game-theoretic concepts and economic problems in novel ways. For example, computational complexity theory provides new insights into the nature of Nash equilibria. Approximation guarantees, originally developed to analyze fast heuristic algorithms, shed new light on the social consequences of economic externalities. Computationally efficient algorithms are an essential ingredient to modern, large-scale auction designs. In this lecture, Tim Roughgarden will survey the key ideas behind these connections and their implications.

Register below to attend.