James R. Wright

Microsoft Research
7th Floor
641 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10011
jrwright@microsoft.com

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 between humans rather than idealized, perfectly rational game theoretic agents.

Education

2010–2016 (expected)

Doctor of Philosophy
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

1. Deep Learning for Predicting Human Strategic Behavior.
   Jason Hartford, James R. Wright, and Kevin Leyton-Brown.
   Working paper.
2. Endogenous Cognitive Hierarchy.
   James R. Wright and Kevin Leyton-Brown.
   Targeted for IJCAI-16: International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
3. 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.
4. Predicting Human Behavior in Unrepeated, Simultaneous-Move Games.
   James R. Wright and Kevin Leyton-Brown.
   Games and Economic Behavior, Revisions requested.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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).
8. 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.
9. 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.

Invited Talks

Simons

Endogenous Cognitive Hierarchy.
At Simons Institute Survey Seminar,
Berkeley, California. 2015.

UBC

Guest lecture for CPSC 430.
University of British Columbia. January, 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

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 Activities

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

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, 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.

Research Employment

2016–2018

Postdoctoral Researcher
Microsoft Research, New York City, New York

2015

Visiting Graduate Student
One of 16 graduate students selected to participate in the Economics and Computation Program, along with 45 faculty.
Simons Institute, University of California, Berkeley, California

2008–2016

Graduate Researcher
Performed independent research and prepared results for publication.
Advisor: Kevin Leyton-Brown
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

2000

Undergraduate Research Assistant
Devised and implemented algorithm for scheduling multiple courier vehicles.
Supervisor: Binay Bhattacharya
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada

1998

Undergraduate Research Assistant
Studied efficient data-structures for temporal reasoning, studied extensions of default theories.
Supervisors: Jim Delgrande and Arvind Gupta
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada

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.