On 23 October, the CWI PhD student successfully defended her thesis at the University of Amsterdam, entitled ‘The Gap and the Gain: Improving the Approximate Mechanism Design Frontier in Constrained Environments’. Her results provide new mathematical tools for improving strategic decision-making in areas such as public resource allocation, auctions, and online markets.
Fair and efficient
Many real-world decisions depend on honest sharing of information by people, companies or algorithms. Mechanism design studies how to build rules that make such honesty the best strategy. In her PhD research, Klumper focused on situations where decisions must also respect strict limits, such as a fixed budget or limited capacity. She developed algorithms that remain both fair and efficient under these constraints, ensuring that participants act truthfully while the overall outcome still serves the common good.
