Bio

Fei Fang is a PhD candidate in Department of Computer Science at University of Southern California. She is working with Professor Milind Tambe at Teamcore Research group. She received her bachelor degree from the department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua Unviersity in July, 2011. Her research lies in the field of artificial intelligence and multi-agent systems, focusing on computational game theory with applications to security and sustainability domains. Her work on “Protecting Moving Targets with Mobile Resources” has been deployed by the US Coast Guard for protecting the Staten Island Ferry in New York City since April 2013. This work has led to her receiving the Meritorious Team Commendation from Commandant of the US Coast Guard and Flag Letter of Appreciation from Vice Admiral and she is named a poster competition finalist in the First Conference on Validating Models of Adversary Behaviors (2013). Her work on “When Security Games Go Green: Designing Defender Strategies to Prevent Poaching and Illegal Fishing” won the Outstanding Paper Award in IJCAI-15 Computational Sustainability Track. She is the chair of the AAAI Spring Symposium 2015 on Applied Computational Game Theory and the recipient of WiSE Merit Fellowship (2014).

Towards Addressing Spatio-Temporal Aspects in Security Games

Towards Addressing Spatio-Temporal Aspects in Security Games

My research aims to provide game-theoretic solutions for fundamental challenges of security resource optimization in the real-world, in domains ranging from infrastructure protection to sustainable development. Whereas first generation of “security games” research provided algorithms for optimizing security resources in mostly static settings, my thesis advances the state-of-the-art to a new generation of security games, handling massive games with complex spatio-temporal settings and leading to real-world applications that have fundamentally altered current practices of security resource allocation. My work provides the first algorithms and models for advancing three key aspects of spatio-temporal challenges in security games. First, focusing on games where actions are taken over continuous time (for example games with moving targets such as ferries and refugee supply lines), I provide an efficient linear-programming-based solution while accurately modeling the attacker’s continuous strategy. This work has been deployed by the US Coast Guard for protecting the Staten Island Ferry in New York City in past few years and fundamentally altering previously used tactics. Second, for games where actions are taken over continuous space (for example games with forest land as target), I provide an algorithm computing the optimal distribution of patrol effort. Third, my work addresses challenges with one key dimension of complexity — the temporal change of strategy. Motivated by the repeated interaction of players in domains such as preventing poaching and illegal fishing, I introduce a novel game model that accounts for temporal behavior change of opponents and provide algorithms to plan effective sequential defender strategies. Furthermore, I incorporate complex terrain information and design the PAWS application to combat illegal poaching, which generates patrol plans with detailed patrol routes for local patrollers. PAWS has been deployed in a protected area in Southeast Asia, with plans for worldwide deployment.