About me:

I’m a postdoctoral researcher hosted by Ariel Procaccia at Harvard University. I am a computer scientist working on computational social choice, i.e., I search for mechanisms that reconcile differing preferences in a way that provably ensures good outcomes. In particular, I am thinking about new paradigms of democracy, how to fairly divide resources, refugee resettlement, and kidney exchange.

Before my postdoc, I did my PhD in the computer science departement at Carnegie Mellon University, after doing my undergraduate studies at Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Germany.

I’m on the academic job market this Fall. I’m looking for faculty positions in North America or Europe, in computer science or operations research. If that matches where you work and you’d enjoy the kind of research on this page happening in a nearby office, please reach out! Find my CV here.

Contact:

E-Mail:
mail at paulgoelz dot de
Mail address:
Paul Goelz
150 Western Ave
Harvard School Of Engineering And Applied Sciences
Allston, MA 02134, USA
Office:
Science and Engineering Complex 5.449

I enjoy getting to know new people and chatting about research. Whether you're a researcher, a student interested in research, a practitioner, or just curious, just schedule a virtual coffee chat!

Publications:

Social Choice for Social Good: Proposals for Democratic Innovation from Computer Science.
Paul Gölz.
PhD thesis.
[Official version]
Now we’re talking: Better deliberation groups through submodular optimization.
Jake Barrett, Kobi Gal, Paul Gölz, Rose Hong, and Ariel Procaccia.
Working paper (September 2022).
Approval-based apportionment.
Markus Brill, Paul Gölz, Dominik Peters, Ulrike Schmidt-Kraepelin, and Kai Wilker.
Mathematical programming, supplants AAAI20 version below.
[Revised version]
In this apportionment lottery, the House always wins.
Paul Gölz, Dominik Peters, and Ariel Procaccia.
EC 2022.
[Full paper] [Slides]
Fair allocations for smoothed utilities.
Yushi Bai, Uriel Feige, Paul Gölz, and Ariel Procaccia.
EC 2022.
[Full paper] [Slides]
Envy-free and Pareto-optimal allocations for agents with asymmetric random valuations.
Yushi Bai and Paul Gölz.
IJCAI 2022.
[Full paper] [Code]
Fair algorithms for selecting citizens’ assemblies.
Bailey Flanigan, Paul Gölz, Anupam Gupta, Brett Hennig, and Ariel Procaccia.
Nature (2021).
[Paper] [Appendices] [Code]
Incentive-compatible kidney exchange in a slightly semi-random model.
Avrim Blum and Paul Gölz.
EC 2021.
[Full version] [Recorded Talk]
Dynamic placement in refugee resettlement.
Narges Ahani, Paul Gölz, Ariel Procaccia, Alexander Teytelboym, and Andrew C. Trapp.
EC 2021.
[Full version] [Recorded talk]
The fluid mechanics of liquid democracy.
Paul Gölz, Anson Kahng, Simon Mackenzie, and Ariel Procaccia.
ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation (TEAC), supplants WINE18 version below.
[Conference version] [WINE] [Recorded talk] [Code]
Neutralizing self-selection bias in sampling for sortition.
Bailey Flanigan, Paul Gölz, Anupam Gupta, and Ariel Procaccia.
NeurIPS 2020.
[Full paper] [Code]
Approval-based apportionment.
Markus Brill, Paul Gölz, Dominik Peters, Ulrike Schmidt-Kraepelin, and Kai Wilker.
AAAI 2020.
[Full version]
Paradoxes in fair machine learning.
Paul Gölz, Anson Kahng, and Ariel Procaccia.
NeurIPS 2019 Spotlight presentation (2.5% of submissions).
[Full version] [Code]
No stratification without representation.
Gerdus Benadè, Paul Gölz, and Ariel Procaccia.
EC 2019.
[Full version] [Recorded talk] [Code]
Migration as submodular optimization.
Paul Gölz and Ariel Procaccia.
AAAI 2019.
[Full version] [Poster] [Code]
The fluid mechanics of liquid democracy.
Paul Gölz, Anson Kahng, Simon Mackenzie, and Ariel Procaccia.
WINE 2018.
[Full version] [WINE] [Recorded talk] [Code]
Synthesis in distributed environments.
Bernd Finkbeiner and Paul Gölz.
FSTTCS 2017.
[Full version] [FSTTCS]
Synthesis for Petri games with one system player.
Paul Gölz.
Undergraduate thesis, 2017.

News:

August: I got my PhD! You can find my thesis here.
July: I’m traveling to Dagstuhl, EC, and IJCAI this Summer. If you’re also there, let’s chat!
August 4 '21: After a lot of work, Nature published our new paper on citizens’ assemblies/sortition!
April 24 '21: I received a JPMorgan Chase AI Research fellowship!
April 20 '21: Harvard CRCS invited me to speak at their Rising Stars in AI seminar. My talk is recorded here!
September 15 '20: I have been supporting the lottery process for the Citizens' Panel on COVID-19 conducted by Of By For * in Michigan. Check out the video of the drawing process!
August 12 '20: This Fall, Anson and I are founding a new MD4SG working group on novel forms of Civic Participation.
April 25 '20: My team finished 41st out of 10,724 at the Google Hash Code programming competition. Thanks to Alex, Andrii, and Da Qi!

Teaching:

15750 Graduate Algorithms.
With Anupam Gupta at CMU, Spring 2020.
15453 Formal Languages, Automata, and Computability.
With Klaus Sutner at CMU, Fall 2019.
Verification.
With Bernd Finkbeiner at Saarland University, Fall 2016.
Programming 1.
With Gert Smolka at Saarland University, Fall 2015.