Event
UTRC CDS Invited Lecture: Shreyas Sundaram, "The Game-Theoretic Impacts of Human Decision-Making"
Friday, October 21, 2016
10:00 a.m.
2168 A V Williams
Regina King
301 405 6576
rking12@umd.edu
UTRC Control and Dynamical Systems Invited Lecture Series
The Game-Theoretic Impacts of Human Decision-Making on Robustness and Security of Systems
Shreyas Sundaram
Assistant Professor
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Purdue University
Abstract
The robustness and security of systems depend critically on the way they are utilized by human decision-makers. While the framework of expected utility theory has traditionally been used to model decision-makers, studies in behavioral psychology and economics have shown that humans consistently deviate from such classical models of behavior. In this talk, we consider the game-theoretic implications of behavioral deviations (captured by Prospect Theory) on the utilizations of failure- and attack-prone systems. We start by considering a setting where a group of individuals utilize a shared resource; the resource fails with a probability that increases with the amount of utilization, and provides a certain return otherwise. We show that utilization increases as the players deviate from risk neutrality, and also when they have heterogeneous attitudes towards loss. We then consider the use of a taxation policy to mitigate overutilization of the resource, and demonstrate that counter-intuitive outcomes can arise under behavioral decision-making. Next, we consider an interdependent security game where each node in a network chooses how much to invest in security to protect itself. The successful attack probability at each node depends on the investment at that node and on neighboring nodes. We characterize the impact of prospect-theoretic perceptions of attack probabilities on the equilibrium security investments. We conclude by discussing the implications for optimal design of networks to mitigate security risks under behavioral decision-making.
Biography
Shreyas Sundaram is an Assistant Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2009, and was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Pennsylvania from 2009 to 2010. He was an Assistant Professor at the University of Waterloo from 2010 to 2014. His research interests include network science, large-scale dynamical systems, fault-tolerant and secure control, game theory, linear system and estimation theory, and the application of algebraic graph theory to system analysis. In 2016, he received an Air Force Research Lab Summer Faculty Fellowship, and the Ruth and Joel Spira Outstanding Teacher Award at Purdue. At Waterloo, he received the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Research Award in 2014, the University of Waterloo Outstanding Performance Award in 2013 and the Faculty of Engineering Distinguished Performance Award in 2012. He was a finalist for the Best Student Paper Award at the 2007 and 2008 American Control Conferences.
