Potential applications for the research include guiding security and defense strategies for such institutions as the Federal Air Marshals Service and the U.S. Border Patrol. Other applications include trading strategies in auctions, and improving security in computer networks.
"One of the big application areas we have been looking at over the last three or four years is using game models to help understand how to allocate and schedule security resources in an efficient way," Kiekintveld said. "One of our primary techniques is the use of computational game theory, which is a mathematical way of representing decision-making problems.
"Games like chess are an example of this," he explained. "You are making a choice between different strategies and the key is that your choice depends on what your opponent, or the other player, is likely to do. So we have to predict what decisions they are likely to make and choose a strategy based on that prediction. We can model all that mathematically, and use computers to analyze the decisions."
The grant is part of the NSF's Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program, which offers prestigious awards to junior faculty members for work that aims to integrate education and research.
Both graduate and undergraduate students will take part in the research by designing algorithms and "agents" to play in tournaments. These agents will be used to help evaluate the robustness of different strategic reasoning methods.
Kiekintveld has been at ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ since 2010. He completed a doctoral degree in computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan and postdoctoral work at the University of Southern California.