We are the Systems Optimization & Decision Analytics Lab (SODALab @UofA) based at the Department of Computing Science, University of Alberta (UofA) and the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii), Edmonton, Canada. We are committed to optimizing complex decision-making in dynamic and multi-agent systems, striving for theoretically-elegant and practically-relevant research at the interface of systems science, artificial intelligence, and economics & computation.
In the SODALab, we view much of the modern world as systems of interacting and possibly self-interested agents, sharing and competing for limited resources under different forms of dynamics and uncertainty. This is particular true for high-impact, safety-critical systems in energy, transportation, and finance, where multi-agent or multi-stakeholder interactions are ubiquitous, robust performance against uncertainty is crucial, and unexplainable results are, in most cases, unacceptable if not utterly intolerable. This motivates the long-term goal of our research in the SODALab — to create a common set of mathematical tools that can help develop algorithms and market mechanisms, with formal guarantees on performance, robustness, and explainability, for optimization and decision-making under uncertainty.
Latest News
Jan 2023: Hossein joined the lab as a M.Sc. student. Welcome!!
Nov 2022: Xiaoqi gave an invited lecture, “Optimization & Decision-Making under Uncertainty,” at Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute (TBSI).
Oct 2022: Vedant joined the SODALab as an undergraduate research intern. Welcome!!
Sept 2022: Yanzhao (M.Sc. student) and Yu (Ph.D. student) joined the SODALab. Welcome!!
Aug 2022: Xiaoqi is now a Fellow of Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii). We are proud to join the Amii family to play our part in making AI for good and for all!!
Jul 2022: Xiaoqi presented our recent work, “Online Allocation with Convex Costs,” at C2E@HKUST.
Jun 2022: Xiaoqi presented our recent work, “Online Allocation with Convex Costs,” at RSRG@Caltech.
Jun 2022: Xiaoqi presented our recent work, “Online Selection with Convex Costs (slides),” at ACM MAMA 2022.
May 2022: Our short paper “Online Selection with Convex Costs” was accepted by ACM MAMA 2022 - in conjunction with ACM SIGMETRICS/IFIP Performance 2022.
May 2022: Henry, Johnson, and Yanze joined the SODALab as undergraduate research interns. Welcome!!
Apr 2022: New NSERC Discovery Grant, “A Unified Framework for Balancing Robustness, Effectiveness, and Fairness in Online Mechanism Design.”
Feb 2022: Siyuan presented our recent work, “Online Search under Convex Costs,” at Reverse EXPO 2022 organized by AI4Society.
July 2021: Siyuan joined the SODALab as an undergraduate research intern. Welcome!!
Contact Us
SODALab@UofA Dr. Xiaoqi Tan The SODALab
Central Academic Building (CAB) 385,
University of Alberta,
116 St and 85 Ave, Edmonton, Alberta,
Canada T6G 2E8
Email: $ \textsf{contact}@\textsf{sodalab.ca} $
Web: https://sodalab.caDr. Xiaoqi Tan
Athabasca Hall (ATH) 303,
Dept. of Computing Science, University of Alberta,
116 St and 85 Ave, Edmonton, Alberta,
Canada T6G 2E8
Email: $ \textsf{xiaoqi.tan}@\textsf{ualberta.ca} $
Web: https://xiaoqitan.org