Chara Podimata

PhD Student in Computer Science at Harvard University

Harvard University, Maxwell Dworkin 223, 33 Oxford Street Cambridge, MA 02138
podimata[AT]g[DOT]harvard[DOT]edu

About

I'm a fourth year PhD student in the EconCS group at Harvard University, where I am advised by Professor Yiling Chen. My research interests lie mostly on the intersection of Theoretical Computer Science, Economics and Machine Learning and specifically on learning under the presence of strategic agents, online learning, and mechanism design.

During the summer of 2019, I had the pleasure of being an intern at Microsoft Research in New York City, mentored by Jennifer Wortman Vaughan.

During the spring of 2020, I am very happy to be back as an intern at Microsoft Research in New York City, this time mentored by Alex Slivkins.

Before joining Harvard, I was an intern for Google in Athens, Greece. I received my Diploma from National Technical University of Athens, where I was advised by Professor Dimitris Fotakis.

You can find my CV here [Last update: April 2020].

My birthname is Charikleia Podimata, but I go by Chara. To pronounce my name correctly: Ha (as in Harlem) and ra (as in rabbit).


News
  • [March 2020] Nika Haghtalab and I will be presenting the "Incentive-Compatible and Incentive-Aware Learning" tutorial in EC20! Site to come soon!
  • [February 2020] New paper on arXiv from my awesome collaboration with Akshay and Thodoris, which we started during my summer internship: Corrupted Multidimensional Binary Search: Learning in the Presence of Irrational Agents.
  • [February 2020] New paper on arXiv from my wonderful summer internship with Jenn, Dave, and Rupert: No-Regret and Incentive-Compatible Online Learning.
  • [January 2020] I was named a finalist for the Facebook 2020 PhD Fellowship!
  • [May 2019] New paper on arXiv: Grinding the Space: Learning to Classify Against Strategic Agents.
  • [January 2019] I was among the finalists for the 2019 Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship.
  • [November 2018] Our paper A Bridge between Liquid and Social Welfare in Combinatorial Auctions with Submodular Bidders has been accepted at AAAI-19!
  • [September 2018] New paper on arXiv: A Bridge between Liquid and Social Welfare in Combinatorial Auctions with Submodular Bidders. Check it out!
  • [June 2018] Our paper Strategyproof Linear Regression in High Dimensions was among the 5 shortlisted papers for the Best Paper Award at EC ' 18!
  • [April 2018] Two papers accepted in EC '18! Strategyproof Linear Regression in High Dimensions and Learning to Bid Without Knowing your Value.



Special thanks to Sophie Spatharioti for helping create this page!