Presenters

Arash Mafi

Dr. Arash Mafi is the executive Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Kansas and has served in various academic leadership positions since 2015. He is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy, a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, and a Fellow of the International Society for Optics and Photonics. His research focuses on integrating fundamental science and application at the intersection of quantum nonlinear optics and complexity. 

Richard Yi

Richard Yi is the Interim Chairperson of the Department of Economics, Professor in the Department of Psychology, and the Director of the Cofrin Logan Center for Addiction Research and Treatment at the University of Kansas. Dr. Yi examines decision and behavioral processes associated with health behaviors, with a focus on valuation of delayed outcomes and dynamic inconsistency as principal factors in addiction and relapse. He is also interested in the intersection of intertemporal and interpersonal decision-making.

Maria Betto

Maria is a microeconomics theorist interested in a wide range of topics, such as information, auctions and foundational choice and decision theory. She is currently a PhD candidate at Northwestern University and incoming Assistant Professor at the Economics Department at Johns Hopkins University.

Bertan Turhan

Dr. Turhan is an Associate Professor of Economics at Iowa State University. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Boston College (2015), B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering, minor in Math, and MA in Economics from Sabanci University. He does research in theory and applications of market design on topics with practical relevance and policy impacts. Dr. Turhan teaches courses in microeconomic theory, market design, and mathematics at undergraduate and graduate levels.

Chris Shannon

Chris Shannon is Richard and Lisa Steiny Professor of Economics and Professor of Mathematics at UC Berkeley. She has a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford and B.S. in Economics and B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Kansas.

Nisarg Shah

Nisarg Shah is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Toronto and a Research Lead for AI Ethics at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. His recognitions include "Innovators Under 35" by MIT Technology Review Asia Pacific (2022) and "AI's 10 to Watch" by IEEE Intelligent Systems (2020). His research addresses fairness in algorithmic decision-making. He co-developed Spliddit.org, which has helped more than 250,000 people make provably fair algorithmic decisions. 

Laura Doval

Laura Doval is the W. Stanton Associate Professor of Business in the Economics Division at Columbia Business School. She is a microeconomic theorist whose research makes conceptual and methodological contributions to the areas of mechanism design, information design, and market design. Her research focuses on understanding how dynamic environments influence individuals' incentives and the potential for institutions to align these incentives with the goals of a designer.

Tarun Sabarwal

Tarun Sabarwal is Professor of Economics at the University of Kansas, author of Monotone Games, and Founder and Director of the Center for Analytical Research in Economics. He received his PhD in economics and MA in mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley. He has chaired and organized the Kansas Workshop in Economic Theory since 2009. His interests are in microeconomic theory, game theory, computer science, and decentralized interdependent decision making. He is Economic Theory Fellow of SAET. 

Iryna Topolyan 

Iryna Topolyan is Professor and Head at the Department of Economics, Carl H. Lindner College of Business, University of Cincinnati. She earned her Ph.D. in Economics from Purdue University in 2009. Her research interests include microeconomic theory, game theory, mathematical economics, and industrial organization. Her work appeared in renowned economics journals, such as Economic Theory, Games and Economic Behavior, Journal of Mathematical Economics, and Journal of Public Economic Theory. 

John Cremin

John Cremin is a final year PhD Candidate at Columbia University. His research interests are information economics and political economy, and his dissertation research studies the impact of the internet on political discourse through models of social learning. 

Nathan Yoder

Nathan Yoder is a microeconomic theorist with interests in market design and information economics. He is particularly interested in  the economics of researcher incentives; the design of privacy-preserving mechanisms for data publication; the economics of matching settings where many agents negotiate agreements; and the design of simple explanations for complicated  models (e.g., AI models). He received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2017 and BS from the University of Oregon in 2010.

Bernard Cornet

Bernard Cornet is the Charles Oswald Professor of Microeconomics at the University of Kansas. He is a past president of the  SAET (Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory) and is currently Executive Director and Secretary of SAET. He was past Editor of the Journal of Mathematical Economics and is currently Associate Editor of Economic Theory, Economic Theory Bulletin, and several other journals.  His research focuses on financial economics, economic theory, dynamics and optimization.

Rabah Amir

Rabah Amir is with Department of Economics, University of Iowa. His primary research areas are in game theory and industrial organization. He held past positions at several universities worldwide, including SUNY at Stony-Brook, University of Manchester, CORE (Universite Catholique de Louvain), and University of Arizona. His present research deals with the theory and application of dynamic games in economics and finance, supermodular games, oligopoly theory, innovation and market structure, and some aspects of environmental and public economics. 

Arjada Bardhi

Arjada Bardhi is an Assistant Professor of Economics at New York University. She is a microeconomic theorist working on information economics and political economy. Her research interests include optimal learning, information disclosure, experimentation, and collective decision making. She holds a PhD in economics from Northwestern University and was an Assistant Professor at Duke University before joining NYU. 

John Zhu 

John Zhu is an associate professor of economics at the University of Kansas. He is interested in contract theory and algorithmic fairness. This year, he has been invited to present his work on regulating Human-AI systems at Princeton and the 2024 Decentralization Conference. His research has been published at Econometrica and Review of Economic Studies. Prior to KU, he was an assistant professor at Wharton and a Cowles Foundation visiting professor.