PhD-studentship at Durham University studying international kidney exchange

 Peter Biro forwards this announcement

PhD-studentship at Durham University in Cooperative Game Theory

Please find below details on a PhD-studentship in the Algorithms & Complexity Group (http://community.dur.ac.uk/algorithms.complexity/) at the Department of Computer Science of Durham University for the project: International Kidney Exchange: How to Ensure Stability?

The PhD-studentship provides full tuition fees and a maintenance grant for 42 months (£15,609 for 2021/2022) both for UK students and international students.

Deadline for applications: 10 May 2021 but the review of applications may close earlier if the PhD studentship is filled.

Starting date: 1 October 2021.

Project summary:  A kidney patient may have a willing donor, but a kidney transplant might not be possible due to blood- or tissue-type incompatibilities. However, patients and donors may be swapped after all patient-donor pairs are pooled together and one seeks to do this optimally (via a solution of a graph decomposition problem). We consider the situation where pools from multiple countries are merged. To keep an international kidney exchange program (KEP) stable, it is crucial that any proposed solutions will be accepted by all participating countries. The goal of this project is to research and improve stability of international KEPs using classical fairness concepts from Cooperative Game Theory. As such, the project has both a theoretical and experimental component.

The project involves a collaboration with the Mechanism Design Group, led by Dr Péter Biró, of The Centre for Economic and Regional Studies in Budapest (https://mechanismdesign.eu/).

Supervisory team: Prof. Daniel Paulusma (Durham, http://community.dur.ac.uk/daniel.paulusma/) and Prof. Matthew Johnson (Durham, http://community.dur.ac.uk/matthew.johnson2/)

Applications are welcomed from students with a first class degree or equivalent in Computer Science or Mathematics. Programming experience is essential.

To apply, please visit https://www.dur.ac.uk/study/pg/apply/. Applicants are encouraged to contact Daniel Paulusma at daniel.paulusma@durham.ac.uk<mailto:daniel.paulusma@durham.ac.uk> in advance of making an application.