TITLE: Dynamic Pricing and Mechanism Design for Uber's Marketplaces

ABSTRACT:

Uber is running one of the largest marketplaces in the world that matches millions of riders and drivers together. One of the key features of Uber's marketplace is dynamic pricing, so called surge pricing, that aims to balance the demand for trips and the supply of available cars. The surge pricing also motivates drivers to relocate to parts of the city with higher demand. In this talk, I'll discuss the design of the new generation of surge mechanisms that aim to increase the marketplace efficiency. 

BIO: Hamid Nazerzadeh is a Dean's Associate Professor in Business Administration in the Data Sciences and Operations department at Marshall School of Business, and (by courtesy) the Department of Computer Science, University of Southern California. He is currently a Staff Data Scientist and Techlead in Marketplace Optimization group at Uber, on sabbatical leave from USC.

Prof. Nazerzadeh obtained his Ph.D. in Operations Research from Stanford University and his B.Sc. from Sharif University of Technology and has worked at Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google research labs. His research focuses on mechanism design and optimization algorithms and their applications in operations and monetization of online markets. He is a Department Editor of journal of Management Science. He is the recipient of Yahoo! Ph.D. Student Fellowship Award (2007), Honorable Mention in George Dantzig Dissertation Awards (2009), Google Faculty Research Award (2013 & 2016), Marshall Dean's Award for Research Excellence (2014), and INFORMS Revenue Management and Pricing Section Prize (2014).