James R. Wright

Assistant Professor
Department of Computing Science
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta
james.wright@ualberta.ca

Academic Employment

2018–present: Assistant Professor
Department of Computing Science
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta.
2016–2018: Postdoctoral Researcher
Microsoft Research, New York, NY.
2015: Visiting Graduate Student
Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing
University of California, Berkeley, CA.

Research Interests

My primary research interest is in using data-driven machine learning models to predict human strategic behaviour; that is, behaviour in interactions where each participant's rewards depend partially on the actions of other participants. My long-term research agenda is to build a general theory for optimally designing algorithms for mediating interactions involving humans or other realistically bounded agents rather than idealized, perfectly rational game theoretic agents.

Education

2010–2016: Doctor of Philosophy
Dissertation: Modeling Human Behavior in Strategic Settings
ACM SIGecom Doctoral Dissertation Award (Honorable Mention)
University of British Columbia, Canada
2007–2010: Master of Science in Computer Science
Thesis: Beyond Equilibrium: Predicting Human Behaviour in Normal Form Games
University of British Columbia, Canada
1995–2000: Bachelor of Science in Computing Science
Simon Fraser University, Canada

Publications

Competitive peer-reviewed conferences

Learning in the Repeated Secretary Problem.
Daniel G. Goldstein, R. Preston McAfee, Siddarth Suri, and James R. Wright.
ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (ACM-EC), 2017.
Deep Learning for Predicting Human Strategic Behavior.
Jason Hartford, James R. Wright, and Kevin Leyton-Brown.
NIPS 2016: Thirtieth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, 2016.
Oral presentation.
Level-0 Meta-Models for Predicting Human Behavior in Games.
James R. Wright and Kevin Leyton-Brown.
ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (ACM-EC), 2014.
Behavioral Game-Theoretic Models: A Bayesian Framework For Parameter Analysis.
James R. Wright and Kevin Leyton-Brown.
Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2012), pages 921–928, 2012.
Best student paper (runner up).
Beyond Equilibrium: Predicting Human Behavior in Normal Form Games.
James R. Wright and Kevin Leyton-Brown.
Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-10), pages 901–907, 2010.

Journals

Learning When to Stop Searching.
Daniel G. Goldstein, R. Preston McAfee, Siddarth Suri, and James R. Wright.
To appear in Management Science.
(Full version of Goldstein et al. [2017])
Predicting Human Behavior in Unrepeated, Simultaneous-Move Games.
James R. Wright and Kevin Leyton-Brown.
Games and Economic Behavior, Volume 106, pages 16–37, November 2017.
(supersedes Wright & Leyton-Brown [2010, 2012])

Under review

Models of Level-0 Behavior for Predicting Human Behavior in Games.
James R. Wright and Kevin Leyton-Brown.
Under review at Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research.
(supersedes Wright & Leyton-Brown [2014])
Incentivizing Evaluation via Limited Access to Ground Truth:
Peer-Prediction Makes Things Worse.
Xi Alice Gao, James R. Wright, and Kevin Leyton-Brown.
Under review by Artificial Intelligence Journal.
(supersedes Gao, Wright, and Leyton-Brown [2016])

Other venues

Incentivizing Evaluation via Limited Access to Ground Truth:
Peer-Prediction Makes Things Worse.
Xi Alice Gao, James R. Wright, and Kevin Leyton-Brown.
Workshop on Algorithmic Game Theory and Data Science at ACM Conference on Economics and Computation, 2016.
Mechanical TA: Partially Automated High-Stakes Peer Grading.
James R. Wright, Chris Thornton, Kevin Leyton-Brown.
ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (ACM-SIGCSE), 2015.
Linear Solvers for Nonlinear Games: Using Pivoting Algorithms to Find Nash Equilibria in n-Player Games.
James R. Wright, Albert Xin Jiang, and Kevin Leyton-Brown.
SIGecom Exchanges, volume 10, number 1, pages 9–12, 2011.

Invited Talks

PGT-2018: Predicting Human Strategic Behavior: From Behavioral Economics to Deep Learning.
At Workshop on Predictive Game Theory,
Evanston, Illinois. 2018.
YoungEC'17: Algorithmic Modeling of Human Behavior.
At Young Researcher Workshop on Economics and Computation,
Tel Aviv, Israel. 2017.
INFORMS-2017: Deep Learning for Human Strategic Modeling.
At INFORMS Annual Meeting,
Houston, Texas. 2017.
CODE-2017: Bayesian Models of Learning in the Repeated Secretary Problem.
At 2017 Conference on Digital Experimentation (CODE@MIT),
Boston, Massachusetts. 2017.
EC-17: Learning in the Repeated Secretary Problem.
At ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (ACM-EC),
Boston, Massachusetts. 2017.
IFORS-2017: Deep Learning for Human Strategic Modeling.
At 21st Conference of the International Federation of Operations Research Societies,
Québec City, Québec. 2017.
Simons: Endogenous Cognitive Hierarchy.
At Simons Institute Survey Seminar,
Berkeley, California. 2015.
UBC: Guest lecture for CPSC 430.
University of British Columbia. January, 2015.
ISMP-2015: Level-0 Meta-Models for Predicting Human Behavior in Games.
At 22nd International Symposium on Mathematical Programming
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 2015.
SIGCSE-15: Mechanical TA: Partially Automated High-Stakes Peer Grading.
At ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education,
Kansas City, Missouri. 2015.
UBC: Guest lecture for CPSC 532L.
University of British Columbia. January, 2014.
SFI: Evaluating Set-Valued Predictions.
At Combining Information Theory and Game Theory,
Santa Fe Institute, New Mexico. 2012.
AAMAS-2012: Behavioral Game-Theoretic Models: A Bayesian Framework For Parameter Analysis.
At 11th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2012), Valencia, Spain. 2012.
GAMES-2012: Beyond Equilibrium: Predicting Human Behavior in Normal Form Games.
At 4th World Congress of the Game Theory Society (GAMES-2012), Istanbul, Turkey. 2012.
UBC: Guest lecture for PSYC 417A.
University of British Columbia. February 2012.
LANL: Beyond Equilibrium: Predicting Human Behavior in Normal Form Games.
At Design and Control of Systems of Goal-Directed Agents; From Game Theory to Game Engineering,
Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico. 2010.
AAAI-10: Beyond Equilibrium: Predicting Human Behavior in Normal Form Games.
At Twenty-Fourth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence,
Atlanta, Georgia. 2010.
Google: Beyond Equilibrium: Predicting Human Behavior in Normal Form Games.
At Google,
Mountain View, California. 2010.
BQGT: Beyond Equilibrium: Predicting Human Behavior in Normal Form Games.
At Behavioral and Quantitative Game Theory Conference on Future Directions,
Newport Beach, California. 2010.

Awards

2017: ACM SIGecom Doctoral Dissertation Award (Honorable Mention)
ACM Special Interest Group on E-commerce
2010–2013: University Graduate Fellowship
University of British Columbia, Canada
Declined in 2010–2012 to hold NSERC
Total value: $80,000
2010–2012: Canada Graduate Scholarship (Ph.D.)
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
Total value: $105,000
2008–2009: Canada Graduate Scholarship (M.Sc.)
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
Total value: $17,500
2000: Computing Science Graduation Award (for top graduating student in department)
Simon Fraser University, Canada
Total value: $600
1996 (twice) and 1999
: Honour Roll
Simon Fraser University, Canada
1996–2000: Open Scholarship
Simon Fraser University, Canada
Full tuition support
1995–1996: Taduesz Specht Memorial Scholarship in Science
Simon Fraser University, Canada
Total value: $3,000

Service

2017: Co-organizer: 2017 New York Computer Science and Economics Day.
2015–ongoing: Member: NSF PI Forum on Peer Assessment.
2014–2015: Student representative: Faculty Recruiting Committee.
2010: Volunteer: AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence.

Editorial Activity

2018: Program Committee, 19th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation.
2018: Reviewer, Games and Economic Behavior.
2017: Program Committee, 27th International World Wide Web Conference.
2017: Program Committee, Thirty-Second AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
2017: Program Committee, 18th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation.
2017: Reviewer, Thirty-First Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems.
2017: Reviewer, Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research.
2016: Program Committee, Thirty-First AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
2016: Reviewer, Econometrica.
2016: Reviewer, Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research.
2016: Reviewer, 12th Conference on Web and Internet Economics.
2016: Reviewer, Artificial Intelligence Journal.
2016: Reviewer, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.
2015: Reviewer, Games and Economic Behavior.
2015: Reviewer, Thirtieth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
2015: Reviewer, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.
2015: Reviewer, ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation.
2013: Reviewer, Journal of Machine Learning Research.
2012: Reviewer, Games and Economic Behavior.
2011: Reviewer, Artificial Intelligence Journal.
2011: Reviewer, International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence.
2011: Reviewer, Twenty-Fifth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
2010: Reviewer, Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems.
2009: Reviewer, ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce.
2009: External reviewer, International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence.

Teaching

My duties as an instructional assistant for the various massively open online courses listed below included constructing new content (problem sets and exams), cross-checking new video comment for slide typos and misstatements, and monitoring and responding to student questions in online forums.

As an instructional assistant for Computers and Society, I led the design and implementation effort of the Mechanical TA peer grading system. I also constructed exams, and assisted with curriculum development.

As a teaching assistant for Multiagent Systems, I constructed quizzes, exams, and assignments, and assisted in the day-to-day operation of the class.

2014: Instructional Assistant, Coursera/University of British Columbia
Game Theory II (Massively Open Online Course), Kevin Leyton-Brown.
2014: Instructional Assistant, Coursera/University of British Columbia
Game Theory (Massively Open Online Course), Kevin Leyton-Brown.
2014: Teaching Assistant, University of British Columbia
Multiagent Systems (graduates), Kevin Leyton-Brown.
2014: Instructional Assistant, University of British Columbia
Computers and Society (advanced undergraduates), Kevin Leyton-Brown.
2013: Instructional Assistant, University of British Columbia
Game Theory II (Massively Open Online Course), Kevin Leyton-Brown.
2013 (twice): Instructional Assistant, Coursera/University of British Columbia
Game Theory (Massively Open Online Course), Kevin Leyton-Brown.
2013: Teaching Assistant, University of British Columbia
Multiagent Systems (graduates), Kevin Leyton-Brown.
2013: Instructional Assistant, University of British Columbia
Computers and Society (advanced undergraduates), Kevin Leyton-Brown.
2009: Teaching Assistant, University of British Columbia
Multiagent Systems (graduates), Kevin Leyton-Brown.
2008: Teaching Assistant, University of British Columbia
Computers and Society (advanced undergraduates), Kurt Eiselt.
2007: Teaching Assistant, University of British Columbia
Advanced Software Engineering (advanced undergraduates), Eric Wohlstadter.

Last update: Sep 27/2018