It Pays to Do the Right Thing

The term "societal networks" probably makes most people think about Facebook.  For Stanford Professor Balaji Prabhakar, the term applies to a broad range of human activities that are vital for a society's functioning.  Transportation networks, electricity grids, healthcare networks are recycling systems are examples.

Prabhakar is interested in human behavior and efficiency within these systems.  At the November Café, he will discuss incentive mechanisms in societal networks, the role technology will play in improving efficiency, and his own experiments aimed at reducing road congestion.

Prabhakar is a faculty member in the Departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Stanford University.  He has been a Terman Fellow at Stanford University and a Fellow of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. He has received the CAREER award from the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Erlang Prize, and the Rollo Davidson Prize.