Regular biography
Ali Makhdoumi is an Associate Professor in the Decision Sciences area at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. His research interests include optimization, game theory, networks, and learning theory with applications to social and technological systems, market design, mechanism design, data markets, LLM advertising, and privacy.
Scholar-generated biography
Ali Makhdoumi is a researcher whose work focuses on the intersection of information theory, privacy, and data markets. His research explores the trade-offs between privacy and utility in data acquisition and analysis, including the design of differentially private mechanisms for data collection. He also investigates the impact of information on market inefficiencies and congestion, such as the informational Braess’ paradox. Additionally, Makhdoumi studies learning dynamics from reviews and the role of data in behavioral manipulation. His work spans distributed optimization, network coding, and submodular functions, with applications in online advertising and media platforms. His research emphasizes the fundamental limits of privacy and the design of systems that balance efficiency and security.