FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

We are delighted to announce the results of the Institute for Advanced Commerce contest for Best Thesis Proposal in E-Commerce.

We are awarding the grand prize, a one-year fellowship including stipend, tuition, and an offer of a summer position at IBM Research, to Peter R. Wurman (http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~pwurman) of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The planned dissertation is entitled "Multidimensional Auction Design for Computational Economies" and is being supervised by Professor Michael Wellman. The research includes a blend of sophisticated economic theory with powerful algorithmic analysis and protocol design.

Other Winners
In addition, there are three other prize winners, and we are awarding each an IBM Thinkpad. They each submitted a very impressive research proposal:

• Otto Koppius of the Erasmus University Rotterdam School of Management, with a dissertation entitled "Multidimensional Auctions: Trading Mechanisms and Applications."
   
  
• Adam Rifkin of the California Institute of Technology, with a dissertation entitled "Using a Global Event Model in Distributed Resource Management Algorithms."
   
  
• Victoria Ungureanu of Rutgers University, with a dissertation entitled "The Formulation of Policies for Electronic Commerce, and their Enforcement."

About the Entries
We received 28 complete entries. Twenty were from US institutions, the remaining 8 were from around the globe. Fifteen came from departments of computer science, information science, or engineering; the other thirteen were from economics, business or marketing departments. Research approaches include economic theory, empirical experiments, market models, formal models, and system building. Each thesis was read by at least two specialists in IBM Research, and were scored on the basis of originality and potential impact. We found many to be excellent and worthy of commendation. On the basis of this set of proposals, the future of research in e-commerce is bright.

# # #