Tuomas Sandholm is Angel Jordan University Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. His research focuses on the convergence of artificial intelligence, economics, and operations research. He is Co-Director of CMU AI. He is the Founder and Director of the Electronic Marketplaces Laboratory. In addition to his main appointment in the Computer Science Department, he holds appointments in the Machine Learning Department, Ph.D. Program in Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Optimization (ACO), and CMU/UPitt Joint Ph.D. Program in Computational Biology. In parallel with his academic career, he was Founder, Chairman, first CEO, and CTO/Chief Scientist of CombineNet, Inc. from 1997 until its acquisition in 2010. During this period the company commercialized over 800 of the world’s largest-scale generalized combinatorial multi-attribute auctions, with over $60 billion in total spend and over $6 billion in generated savings. He is Founder and CEO of Optimized Markets, Inc., which is bringing a new optimization-powered paradigm to advertising campaign sales, pricing, and scheduling.

Sandholm has developed the leading algorithms for several general classes of game with his students and postdocs. The team that he leads is the multi-time world champion in computer heads-up no-limit Texas hold’em, which was the main benchmark and decades-open challenge problem for testing application-independent algorithms for solving imperfect- information games. Their AI Libratus became the first to beat top humans at that game. Then their AI Pluribus became the first and only AI to beat top humans at the multi-player game. That is the first superhuman milestone in any game beyond two-player zero-sum games. He is Founder and CEO of Strategic Machine, Inc., which provides solutions for strategic reasoning under imperfect information in a broad set of applications ranging from poker to other recreational games to business strategy, negotiation, strategic pricing, finance, cybersecurity, physical security, auctions, political campaigns, and medical treatment planning. He is also Founder and CEO of Strategy Robot, Inc., which focuses on defense, intelligence, and other government applications.

Among his honors are the Minsky Medal, McCarthy Award, Engelmore Award, Computers and Thought Award, inaugural ACM Autonomous Agents Research Award, CMU’s Allen Newell Award for Research Excellence, Sloan Fellowship, NSF Career Award, Carnegie Science Center Award for Excellence, and Edelman Laureateship. He is Fellow of the ACM, AAAI, INFORMS, and AAAS. He holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Zurich.