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Recommendation Systems: An Axiomatic Approach
Biography:
Jennifer Tour Chayes is managing director of the newly announced
Microsoft
Research New England lab in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, scheduled to open in July 2008. Before
this, she was research area manager for Mathematics, Theoretical
Computer Science and Cryptography at
Microsoft
Research Redmond. Chayes joined
Microsoft Research
in 1997, when she co-founded the
Theory
Group. Her research areas include phase
transitions in discrete mathematics and computer science,
structural and dynamical properties of self-engineered networks,
and algorithmic game theory. She is the co-author of
almost 100 scientific papers and the co-inventor of more than 20
patents.
Chayes has many ties to the academic
community. She is Affiliate Professor of Mathematics and
Physics at the
University of Washington,
and was for many years Professor of Mathematics at
UCLA. She
serves on numerous institute boards, advisory committees and
editorial boards, including the
Turing
Award Selection Committee of the
Association for Computing
Machinery, the Board of Trustees of the
Mathematical Sciences Research
Institute, the Advisory Boards of the
Center for Discrete Mathematics
and Computer Science and the
Miller
Institute for Basic Research in Science, the
U.S.
National Committee for Mathematics and the
Committee
on Assuring the Integrity of Research Data of
the
National
Academies, the
Advisory
Committee on Women in Computing of the
Association for Computing Machinery, the Leadership Advisory
Council of the
Anita Borg
Institute for Women and Technology, and the
Selection Committee for the
Anita Borg
Award for Technical Leadership. Chayes
is a past Chair of the Mathematics Section of the
American Association for the
Advancement of Science, and a past
Vice-President of the
American
Mathematical Society.
Chayes received her B.A. in biology and
physics at
Wesleyan University,
where she graduated first in her class, and her Ph.D. in
mathematical physics at
Princeton.
She did her postdoctoral work in the mathematics and physics
departments at
Harvard
and
Cornell.
She is the recipient of a
National
Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, a
Sloan
Fellowship, and the UCLA Distinguished
Teaching Award. She has twice been a member of the
Institute for Advanced Study
in Princeton. Chayes is a Fellow of the
American Association for the
Advancement of Science, and a National
Associate of the
National
Academies.
Chayes is best known for her work on phase
transitions, in particular for laying the foundation for the
study of phase transitions in problems in discrete mathematics
and theoretical computer science; this study is now giving rise
to some of the fastest known algorithms for fundamental problems
in combinatorial optimization. She is also one of the
world’s experts in the modeling and analysis of random,
dynamically growing graphs – which are used to model the
Internet, the World Wide Web and a host of other technological
and social networks. Among Chayes’ contributions to
Microsoft technologies are the development of methods to analyze
the structure and behavior of various networks, the design of
auction algorithms, and the design and analysis of various
business models for the online world.
Chayes lives with her husband,
Christian
Borgs, who also happens to be her principal
scientific collaborator. In her spare time, she enjoys
overworking. |
