Jay Sethuraman

PROFESSOR OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING AND OPERATIONS RESEARCH; CHAIR, DEPARTMENT OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING AND OPERATIONS RESEARCH

326 S.W. Mudd
Mail Code 4704

Tel(212) 854-4931
Fax(212) 854-8103

Jay Sethuraman is interested in designing effective resource allocation mechanisms.  He has developed new mechanisms for assigning students to public schools.   He has applied optimization tools and techniques to study matching and allocation problems in which fairness and incentives are important. A major focus of his current interests is the role of operations research methods in public decision making problems.

Research Interests

Discrete Optimization, Game Theory, Mechanism Design, Scheduling Theory

Of particular interest to Sethuraman is the emerging area of ``Market Design,’’ which seeks to understand why some markets and institutions work well whereas others don’t, and uses these insights to engineer good outcomes in different environments. Exploring the properties of mechanisms in terms of fairness, incentives, and economic efficiency as well as computational efficiency is a key step in this exercise, and Sethuraman has developed this axiomatic approach for rationing problems in networks as well as for matching and assignment problems. Due to the inter-disciplinary nature of this research, Sethuraman collaborates with economists as well as computer scientists on these research questions.

Sethuraman received a BE (Hons.) in electrical and electronics engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in 1991, an MSc. (Engg.) in computer science from the Indian Institute of Science in 1994, and a PhD in operations research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1999.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

  • Vice-Chair, IEOR Department, Columbia University, 2015–
  • Professor of industrial engineering and operations research, Columbia University, 2013-
  • Associate professor of industrial engineering and operations research, Columbia University, 2005–2013
  • Assistant professor of industrial engineering and operations research, Columbia University, 2000–2005

HONORS & AWARDS

  • Great Teacher Award, Society of Columbia Graduates, 2017.
  • NSF Career Award, 2000.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

  • Itai Feigenbaum, Jay Sethuraman, and Chun Ye “Approximately Optimal Mechanisms for Startegyproof Facility Location: Minimizing L_p norm of costs,’’ Mathematics of Operations Research, 42(2):434-447, 2017.
  • Herve Moulin and Jay Sethuraman, “The Bipartite Rationing Problem,’’ Operations Research, 61(5), 1087-1100, 2013.
  • Daniela Saban and Jay Sethuraman, “House Allocation with Indifferences: A generalization and a unified view,” Proc. of the ACM Conference on Economics and Computation, 803-820, 2013.
  • Olivier Bochet, Rahmi Ilkilic, Herve Moulin and Jay Sethuraman, “Balancing supply and demand under bilateral constraints,” Theoretical Economics, 7(3): 395-423, 2012.
  • Parag Pathak and Jay Sethuraman, “Lotteries in Student Assignment: An Equivalence Result,” Theoretical Economics, 6(1):1-17, 2011.
  • Akshay-Kumar Katta and Jay Sethuraman, “A solution to the random assignment problem on the full preference domain,” Journal of Economic Theory, 131(1):231-250, 2006.
  • Lisa Fleischer and Jay Sethuraman, “Efficient Algorithms for Separated Continuous Linear Programs: The Multicommodity Flow Problem with Holding Costs and Extensions,” Mathematics of Operations Research, 30(4):916-938, 2005.
  • Dimitris Bertsimas and Jay Sethuraman, “From fluid relaxations to practical algorithms for job shop scheduling: the makespan objective,” Mathematical Programming, 92(1):61-102, 2002.
  • Chung-Piaw Teo, Jay Sethuraman, and Wee-Peng Tan, “Gale-Shapley stable marriage problem revisited: strategic issues and applications,” Management Science, 47(9):1252-1267, 2001.
  • Chung-Piaw Teo and Jay Sethuraman, “The Geometry of Fractional Stable Matchings and its Applications,” Mathematics of Operations Research, 23(4):874-891, 1998.