FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

We are delighted to announce the results of the second 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 David C Parkes of the University of Pennsylvania (http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~dparkes). The planned dissertation is entitled "A Computational Approach to Auctions: Iterative Combinatorial Auctions and Bounded-Rational Agents" and is being supervised by Professor Lyle H. Ungar. The research looks at two aspects of auctions: it analyzes implications of computing cost in bidding by including considerations of bounded rationality, and also proposes a practical way to achieve optimal results through iterative combinatorial auctions.

In addition, there are two other prize winners, and we are awarding each an IBM Thinkpad. Each of them submitted an impressive research proposal:

- Morad Benyoucef of the University of Montreal, with a dissertation entitled "Support for Combined E-Negotiations: Concepts, Architecture, and Evaluation"

- Sivakumar Viswanathan of New York University, Stern School of Business, with a dissertation entitled "Dotcoms Versus Notcoms: The Impact of Internet Commerce on Traditional Firms"

We received 21 complete entries. Sixteen were from US institutions, the remaining five were from around the globe. Twelve came from students in departments of management or economics, the other nine from departments of computer science, information science, or engineering. Each thesis was read by at least two specialists in IBM Research, and were scored on the basis of originality and potential impact. A gratifying number were excellent, and we had a difficult time picking the winners. We are delighted that so much new intellectual energy is being added to e-commerce research.

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