I am a Doctoral Candidate in Information Management and Systems in the School of Information (iSchool) at UC Berkeley. My doctorate is part of the designated emphasis in communication, computation, and statistics (DECCS).
I am also concurrently an MA candidate in the Berkeley Statistics department.

My research interests are in the utilization of risk-reducing empirically-validated quantitative modeling approaches to the design, specificationm and utilization of service-oriented information management systems. The main idea is that all information systems operate under modeling assumptions and all interaction is facilitated through some form of models. These models operate on an ever increasing set of granular and plentyful data but not all models are created equal. As such making the better modeling choices will determine the effectiveness of complex information systems, analytic systems, decisioning systems, and large-scale multi-user platforms. I have also introduced behavioral economic thinking into privacy research with my workshop paper at Ubicomp 2003.

My academic & dissertation advisor is Yale Braunstein.

Topic Expertise

  • Health-Care Analytics: medical claims negotiations, medical debt recovery, medical adherence risk modeling
  • Auction Design: combinatorial auctions
  • Bandwidth on Demand
  • Work Systems Design
  • Multi-Agent Systems Simulation and Mission Operations
  • Fraud detection in financial statements
  • Online Advertising: search-behavior conversion scoring, click-through-rate estimation, behavioral-targeting, Large-scale data mining

Professional Experience

  • Research and Development :: AdBrite Inc. :: Senior Statistician/Scientist :: Large-scale performance-driven online advertising - behavioral targeting - web analytics - keyword auction optimization - next-generation advertising risk modeling
  • Market Driven Research :: FICO :: Analytic Scientist :: Health-Care Analytics, Search Engine Marketing, Analytic Tools Design, Fraud Detection, Debt Recovery, Risk Modeling
  • Center for Advanced Research :: PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP :: Senior Contract Researcher :: Stephen Bay :: Fraud risk assessments in financial statements.
  • Center for Studies in Higher Education :: UC Berkeley :: GSR :: Diane Harley :: Transaction Log Analysis and Survey Analysis - Digital Resources Study.
  • Center for Document Engineering :: UC Berkeley :: GSR :: Bob Glushko :: Identity management - Roles Project.
  • Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science :: USRA :: Visiting Student :: Maarten Sierhuis :: Mobile Agents Project - multi-agent architecture - Agent-Based Simulations.
  • Aravo Solutions :: Director of Research :: Management Team :: Data cleansing - System design - Market analytics - User studies.
  • UCB-Fujitsu Technology Labs Collaboration :: Collaborator :: Combinatorial auction design for bandwidth trading
  • UCB-NetExchange Collaboration :: GSR :: Pravin Varaiya :: Combinatorial auction design
  • IBM Research :: Co-Op :: Jakka Sairamesh :: Combinatorial auction design
  • Program for Research on the Information Economy :: University of Michigan :: GSR :: Jeff MacKie-Mason :: Domain name auctions - Multiagent digital library design
  • School of Public Policy :: University of Michigan :: GSR :: Lawrence Mohr :: Multidimensional impact analysis of federal funding on higher education.
  • Department of Economics :: University of Michigan :: USR :: David Roth :: Industrial Organization topics - design for course in industrial regulation.

CONSULTING ENGAGEMENTS:

  • Private :: Quantitative Consultant :: Health care analytics
  • Infostride Inc. :: Advisor :: Educational technology
  • Aravo Solutions Inc. :: Advisor :: Analytics for process optimization
  • Splitthedifference Inc. :: Research Consultant :: Analytics on negotiations
  • P4 Technologies :: Advisor :: Early stage startup
  • Privacy Guardian :: Advisor :: Early stage startup
PUBLICATIONS:
Refereed Journals:

  • Kaskiris, Charis, Jain, Rahul, Rajagopal, Ram, and Pravin Varaiya (2006) “Combinatorial Auction Bandwidth Trading; An Experimental Study” in Experiments in Economic Sciences: New Approaches to Solving Real-world Problems, Springer.

Conference Proceedings - Position Papers - Workshop Papers:

  • Kaskiris, Charis, Yusuf Butun, Rahul Jain (2006) "An Experimental Analysis of a Combinatorial Market Mechanism for Bandwidth Trading" 1st IEEE International Workshop on Bandwidth on Demand, San Francisco, CA.
  • Diane Harley, Jonathan Henke, Shannon Lawrence, Ian Miller, Irene Percialli and David Nasatir, with contributions by Charis Kaskiris and Cara Bautista, (2006) “Use and Users of Digital Resources: A Focus on Undergraduate Education in the Humanities and Social Sciences”, Digital Resources Study Final Report, Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley.
  • Fetscherin, Marc., Kaskiris, Charis, Wallenberg, Fredrik, "Gaming or Sharing at LAN-Parties: What is going on?" in: Paolo Nesi and Kia Ng and Jaime Delgado (Ed.), Proceedings of the First International Conference On Automated Production of Cross Media Content for Multi-Channel Distribution, Florence: IEEE Computer Society Press, November 30 - December 2, 2005, P. 179-186. [pdf]
  • Kaskiris, Charis. "The essentials: What are the fundamental building blocks of the field of information?" i-Conference position paper, September 2005. [pdf]
  • Sierhuis, M., Clancey, W. J., Alena, R. L., Berrios, D., Shum, S. B., Dowding, J., Graham, J., Hoof, R. v., Kaskiris, C., Rupert, S., & Tyree, K. S. (2005). NASA's Mobile Agents Architecture: A Multi-Agent Workflow and Communication System for Planetary Exploration. International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space (i-SAIRAS) 2005, Munchen, Germany.
  • Kaskiris, Charis, Sierhuis, Maarten, Clancey, William J., Hoof, Ron van. “Mobile Agents: A Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System for Human-Robotic Planetary Exploration” 2nd International Symposium on Systems & Human Science, San Francisco 2005. [local]
  • Kaskiris, Charis, Jain, Rahul, Rajagopal, Ram and Varaiya, Pravin. “Combinatorial Auction Design for Bandwidth Trading: An Experimental Study” International Conference Experiments in Economic Sciences, Okayama and Kyoto, Japan , 2004. [pdf]
  • Clancey, William J.; Sierhuis, Maarten; Alena, Richard; Crawford, Seku; Dowding, Jim; Graham, Jeff; Kaskiris, Charis; Tyree, K S. and Hoof, Ron van. "The Mobile Agents Integrated Field Test: Mars Dessert Research Station April 2003." The 17 th International FLAIRS Conference, St. Augustine, FL 2004. [pdf]
  • Clancey, William J.; Sierhuis, Maarten; Alena, Richard; Crawford, Seku; Dowding, Jim; Graham, Jeff; Kaskiris, Charis; Tyree, K S. and Hoof, Ron van. " Mobile Agents: A Distributed Voice-Commanded Sensory and Robotic System for Surface Eva Assistance." 9th ASCE Aerospace Division International Conference, Houston, TX 2004. [pdf]
  • Kaskiris, Charis. "Socially-Informed Privacy-Enhancing Solutions: Economic Privacy and the Negotiated Privacy Boundary," Workshop on Socially Informed Design of Privacy-enhancing Solutions in Ubiquitous Computing, Ubicomp. Seattle, WA, 2003. [local][site]
  • Clancey, William J.; Sierhuis, Maarten; Kaskiris, Charis and Hoof, Ron van. "Brahms Mobile Agents: Architecture and Field Tests," AAAI Fall Symposium. North Falmouth, MA, 2002, 25-29.
  • Clancey, William J.; Sierhuis, Maarten; Kaskiris, Charis and Hoof, Ron van. "Advantages of Brahms for Specifying and Implementing a Multiagent Human-Robotic Exploration System," The 16th International FLAIRS Conference. St. Augustine, FL, 2003. [pdf]

Work In Progress:

  • "A Survey of Stastical Methods for Financial Statement Fraud Detection" (with Stephen Bay, Markus Anderle, Krishna Kumaraswamy, and David Steier)
  • "An Empirical Investigation of Present-Biased Preferences" (with Hai Che and Teck-Hua Ho)

Theses:

  • “Essays in Behavioral Economic Engineering”, School of Information, University of California, Berkeley :: PhD dissertation [in progress]
  • “Negotiated Discounts and Time Preferences: A Non-parametric Approach”, Dept of Statistics, Univerisy of California, Berkeley :: MA thesis [in progress].

Technical Reports:

  • Kaskiris, Charis, Sierhuis, Maarten. “The Brahms Java Activities Tutorial”, preliminary version, May 2005.
  • Damer, Bruce; Sierhuis, Maarten; Kaskiris, Charis; Hoof, Ron Van; Campbell, Bruce; Rasmussen, Dave; Neilson, Merryn; Gold, Stuart and Brandt, Galen. Proposal 000104, "Brahms VE: A Collaborative Virtual Environment for Mission Operations, Planning and Scheduling," Digital Space Inc., 2001.
  • Kaskiris, Charis and Maarten Sierhuis (2001) Brahms TM01-0007 "STTR VRE/FMARS Demonstration Model" - Version 0.45 Draft ( 29 November 2001)
  • Smith, Calvin, Klemperer-Johnson, Sonia, Liggett, Emily, Kaskiris Charis “ ROLES Project Final Report” (Spring 2002)
  • Kaskiris, Charis & Maarten Sierhuis (2001) Brahms TM01-0008 "Mobile Agents: Distributed Human-Robotic EVA System for Surface Operations: Scenario and Field Test Design" - Version 0.3 Draft (20 December 2001)

Posters:

  • "Behavioral Economic Engineering" FORUMUSA 2006 (selected on a competitive basis) [not attended]
  • "NASA's Mobile Agents Architecture" AAMAS 2005 Maarten Sierhuis, William J. Clancey, Richard L. Alena, Dan Berrios, Simon Buckingham Shum, John Dowding, Jeffrey Graham, Ron van Hoof, Charis Kaskiris, Kim S. Tyree [not attended]

Inventions:

  • Varaiya, Pravin, Rahul Jain, Charis Kaskiris, Jun Shu, Ram Rajagopal, Nisha Pillai "System and Method for Conducting Combinatorial Exchanges" Patent Application 11/389,558 March 23, 2006.
  • Damer, Bruce, Maarten Sierhuis, Charis Kaskiris, Ron Van Hoof "Interface between Brahms and the OWorld 3D API: Brahms VE OWorld Exporter and JavaScript Writer", Provisional Statement of Invention, NASA Ames Research Center (2001).

 Presentations:

  • Center for Advanced Research, PwC, Brown Bag Series – "Behavioral Economic Engineering" San Jose, CA :: Sept. 12, 2006
  • School of Information Friday Information Seminar – "Behavioral Economic Engineering: An Emprical Investigation of Time Preferences" :: April 21, 2006.
  • Fair Isaac Corporation – "Negotiated Discounts and Time Preferences" San Rafael, CA :: January 2006.
  • School of Information Friday Information Seminar – "Report on the iSchool Summit" (with Anna Lee Saxanian) UC Berkeley:: October 21, 2005
  • iConference Panel Discussant – “Foundations of Information Science” Penn State University :: September 29, 2005.
  • Fujitsu Technology Labs – “SeBiDA – An Auction Based System for Bandwidth Trading” (with Rahul Jain & Yusuf Butun) :: September 8th, 2005.
  • 2nd International Symposium on Systems and Human Science – “Mobile Agents: A Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System for Human-Robotic Planetary Exploration”, San Francisco, CA :: 2005.
  • UbiComp Privacy Workshop – "Socially-Informed Privacy-Enhancing Solutions: Economic Privacy and the Negotiated Privacy Boundary", Seattle, WA :: 2003.

Public Press Interviews:

Software:

  • Kaskiris, Charis and Yusuf Butun (2005). Experimental Economics Platform for Human-Agent Experiments
  • Kaskiris, Charis. (2005). Math and Randomization External Java Activities for the Brahms Environment. [integration of the COLT random library in Brahms]
  • Kaskiris, Charis, Ram Rajagopal, Nisha Pilai. (2004). An Environment for Combinatorial Auction Experiments, EECS, UC Berkeley.

Research Support Acknowledgement:

  • Harley, Diane, Jonathan Henke, Alison Head, Ian Miller, David Nasatir, Xi Sheng, Jing Guo (2004). “The Use of Digital Resources in the Humanities and Social Science Undergraduate Education: First Year Report,” Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley.
  • Mohr, Lawrence. (1999). “ The impact profile approach to policy merit. The case of research grants and the university”. Evaluation Review. 23(2):212-49.

Tutorials:

  • Alessandro Acquisti, Maarten Sierhuis, and Chin Seah "Modeling and Simulating Work Practice with the Brahms Multi-agent Environment,". Tutorial at the Conference on Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation (BRIMS 2005). Universal City, CA, May 2005. (Tutorial contributor. Tutorial presenters: Maarten Sierhuis and Chin Seah.)

ACADEMIC & PROFESSIONAL SERVICE

Invitations:

Technical Program Committee:

Reviewer:

  • XXVIII Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Vancuver, BC, Canada [July 2006]
  • iConference, Pensylvania State University, [September 2005]
  • XXVII Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society , Stresa, Italy [July 2005]
  • BAA NASA [FY 2005] (confidential)
  • SBIR ARC NASA [FY 2004] (confidential)

UC Berkeley Academic Senate Commitees:

  • E-Berkeley Steering Committee 2002-04
  • e-architecture working group on enterprise roles and application authorization 2003.
  • Educational Technology Committee 2001 | Committee on Computing and Communications 1999.
  • SIMS Doctoral Committee, Student Representative 2005 | SIMS Doctoral Student Chair, 1998/99.

Professional Organizations:

  • American Statistical Association
  • American Economic Association
  • American Computing Machinery
  • American Society for Information Science

TEACHING:

University of California, SIMS (Spring 2005) IS290-3 Agent-based Modeling and Simulation of Organizations and Work Practice
Jointly taught with Dr. Maarten Sierhuis.
University of Michigan, PPIA Summer Program (Summer 1998)
Summer Program Graduate Instructor: Introductory Economics; Intermediate Microeconomics; Trigonometry; Calculus.
Jointly taught with Carl P. Simon and Erik Hurst
University of Michigan, School of Public Policy | Department of Economics (Winter 1996 | 1997)
Graduate Student Instructor:  SPP 571 | Econ 571 Applied Econometrics at the Graduate Level
GSI for Gary Solon | Debbie Reed