Rasoul Etesami

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Education

• Ph.D. Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, January 2016.
• M.Sc. Applied Mathematics, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, December 2015.
• M.Sc. Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, May 2012.

Academic Positions

• Associate Professor, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2023--present
• Affiliate Associate Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2023--present
• Affiliate Associate Professor, Coordinated Science Laboratory, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2019--present
• Assistant Professor, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2017--2023
• Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Princeton University and WINLAB, 2016-2017

Other Professional Employment

• Research Intern, Alcatel-Lucent, Bell-Labs, NJ, USA, Summer 2015.

Research Topics

• Game theory

Books Authored or Co-Authored (Original Editions)

• S.R. Etesami, "Potential-Based Analysis of Social, Communication, and Distributed Networks", Springer, March 2017.

Chapters in Books

• S.R. Etesami and T. Başar. Network games. Handbook of Dynamic Game Theory, Springer International Publishing, 2017.

Selected Articles in Journals

• E. Ma, S.R. Etesami, and P. Rathi, Reward Poisoning on Federated Reinforcement Learning, Transactions on Machine Learning Research (TMLR), September 2024 (accepted).
• M. Bastopcu, S.R. Etesami, and T. Basar, Online and Offline Dynamic Influence Maximization Games Over Social Networks, IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems (TCNS), November 2024 (accepted).
• S.R. Etesami, Learning Stationary Nash Equilibrium Policies in N-Player Stochastic Games with Independent Chains, SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization (SICON), Volume 62(2), pp. 799-825, 2024.
• T. Qin, S.R. Etesami, and C.A. Uribe, Faster Convergence of Local SGD for Over-Parameterized Models, Transactions on Machine Learning Research (TMLR), March 2024 .
• S.R. Etesami, Maximizing Social Welfare Subject to Network Externalities: A Unifying Submodular Optimization Approach, IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering (TNSE), Volume 11(5), pp. 4860-4874, 2024.
• V. Leon and S.R. Etesami, Online Learning in Budget-Constrained Dynamic Colonel Blotto Games, Dynamic Games and Applications, pp. 1-23, Springer, 2023.
• T. Qin, S.R. Etesami, and C.A. Uribe, The Role of Local Steps in Local SGD, Optimization Methods and Software, pp. 1-27, Taylor & Francis, 2023.
• V. Leon, S.R. Etesami, and R. Nagi, Limited-Trust in Diffusion of Competing Alternatives Over Social Networks, IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering (TNSE), Volume 11(1), pp. 1320 - 1336, 2023.
• S. Arefizadeh, S. Arefizadeh, S.R. Etesami, and S. Bolouki, Robustness of Dynamics in Games: A Contraction Mapping Decomposition Approach, Automatica, Volume 155, pp. 111142, Elsevier, 2023.
• A. Rahmanian, S. Bolouki, S.R. Etesami, and A. Mohebbi, Partisan Confidence Model for Group Polarization, IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering (TNSE), Volume 10(6), pp. 3267-3280, 2023.
• S.R. Etesami, Maximizing Convergence Time in Network Averaging Dynamics Subject to Edge Removal, SIAM Journal on Optimization (SIOPT), Volume 32(4), pp. 2718-2744, 2022.
• M. Bastopcu, S.R. Etesami, and T. Basar, The Role of Gossiping for Information Dissemination over Networked Agents, Entropy, pp.1-23, 2023.
• S.R. Etesami, An Optimal Control Framework for Online Job Scheduling with General Cost Functions, Operations Research (OR), Volume 70 (5), pp. 2674-2701, 2022.
• S.R. Etesami, Online Assortment and Market Segmentation under Bertrand Competition with Set-Dependent Revenues, SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics (SIDMA), Volume 36(2), pp. 1436-1466, 2022.
• T. Qin, S.R. Etesami, Optimal Online Algorithms for File-Bundle Caching and Generalization to Distributed Caching, ACM Transactions on Modeling and Performance Evaluation of Computing Systems (ToMPECS), Volume 6(1), pp. 1-23, 2021.
• S.R. Etesami, N. Kiyavash, V. Leon, H.V. Poor, Optimal Adversarial Policies in the Multiplicative Learning System with a Malicious Expert, IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, Volume 16, pp. 2276-2287, 2021.
• S.R. Etesami, Duality and Stability in Complex Multiagent State-Dependent Network Dynamics, SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization (SICON), Volume 58(6), pp. 3062-3091, 2020.
• S.R. Etesami, Open-Loop Equilibrium Strategies for Dynamic Influence Maximization Game Over Social Networks, IEEE Control Systems Letters (L-CSS), Volume 6, pp. 1496 - 1500, 2021.
• T. Qin, S.R. Etesami, A Randomized Algorithm for Generalized Accelerated Projection Method, IEEE Control Systems Letters (L-CSS), Volume 5, Issue 1, pp. 85-90, 2020.
• S.R. Etesami, Complexity and Approximability of Optimal Resource Allocation and Nash Equilibrium over Networks, SIAM Journal on Optimization (SIOPT), Volume 30(1), pp. 885-914, 2020.
• S.R. Etesami, W. Saad, N. Mandayam, H.V. Poor, "Smart Routing of Electric Vehicles for Load Balancing in Smart Grids”, Automatica, Volume 120, pp. 1-14, 2020.
• S.R. Etesami, T. Basar, Dynamic Games in Cyber-Physical Security: An Overview, Dynamic Games and Applications (DGAA), Volume 9, Issue 4, pp. 884–913, December 2019.
• S.R. Etesami, A Simple Framework for Stability Analysis of State-Dependent Networks of Heterogeneous Agents. SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization (SICON), Volume 57(3), pp. 1757-1782, May 2019.
• S.R Etesami, S. Bolouki, A. Nedich, T. Basar, H.V. Poor, Influence of Conformist and Manipulative Behaviors on Public Opinion, IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems (TCNS), Volume 6, Issue 1, pp. 202-214, March 2019.
• G. Rahi, S.R. Etesami, W. Saad, N. Mandayam, and H.V. Poor, Managing Price Uncertainty in Prosumer-Centric Energy Trading: A Prospect-Theoretic Stackelberg Game Approach, IEEE Transactions on Smart Grids (TSG), Volume 10(1), pp. 702-713, January 2019.
• S.R. Etesami, W. Saad, N. Mandayam, H.V. Poor, Stochastic Games for Smart Grid Energy Management with Prospect Prosumers, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (TAC), Volume 63, Issue 8, pp. 2327 - 2342, August. 2018.
• A. Truong, S.R. Etesami, J. Etesami, N. Kiyavash, Optimal Attack Strategies against Predictors - Learning from Expert Advice, IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, Volume 13, Issue 1, pp. 6-19, January 2018.
• S.R. Etesami, T. Basar, Pure Nash Equilibrium in A Capacitated Selfish Resource Allocation Game, IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems (TCNS), Volume 5, Issue 1, pp. 536-547, March 2018.
• A. Truong, S.R. Etesami, N. Kiyavash, Learning From Sleeping Experts: Rewarding Informative, Available, and Accurate Experts, ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems, Volume 23, Issue 6, pp. 77, December 2018.
• M. Hosseini, G. Kurillo, S.R. Etesami, and J. Yu, Towards Coordinated Bandwidth Adaptations for Hundred-Scale 3D Tele-Immersive Systems, Multimedia Systems, Volume 23(4), pp. 421-434, July 2017.
• S.R. Etesami, T. Basar, Price of Anarchy and an Approximation Algorithm for the Binary-Preference Capacitated Selfish Replication Game, Automatica, Volume 76, pp. 153-163, February 2017.
• T. Basar, S.R. Etesami, A. Olshevsky, Convergence Time of Quantized Metropolis Consensus Over Time-Varying Networks, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (TAC), Volume 61, Issue 12, pp. 4048 - 4054, December 2016.
• S.R. Etesami, T. Basar, Complexity of Equilibrium in Competitive Diffusion Games on Social Networks, Automatica, Volume 68, pp. 100-110, June 2016.
• S.R. Etesami, T. Basar, Convergence Time for Unbiased Quantized Consensus Over Static and Dynamic Networks, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (TAC), 61(2), pp. 443-455, February 2016.
• S.R. Etesami, T. Basar, Game-Theoretic Analysis of the Hegselmann-Krause Model for Opinion Dynamics in Finite Dimensions, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (TAC), Volume 60, Issue 7, pp. 1886-1897, July 2015.

Articles in Conference Proceedings

• S.R. Etesami and R. Srikant, Decentralized and Uncoordinated Learning of Stable Matchings: A Game-Theoretic Approach, The 39th Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), February 2025, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (23.4% acceptance rate).
• E. Ma, C. Pan, S.R. Etesami, H. Zhao, and O. Milenkovic, FedGTST: Boosting Global Transferability of Federated Models via Statistics Tuning, Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), December 2024, Vancouver, Canada (25.8 % acceptance rate).
• A. Anjarlekar, S.R. Etesami, and R. Srikant, Online Mechanism Design for Differentially Private Data Acquisition, Proc. 63st IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), December 2024, Milan, Italy (accepted).
• S.R. Etesami, Multi-item Resource Allocation for Maximizing Social Welfare under Network Externalities, Proceedings of the 25th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC), July 2024, New Haven, Connecticut (24% acceptance rate).
• T. Qin and S.R. Etesami, Learning ϵ-Nash Equilibrium Policies in Stochastic Games with Unknown Independent Chains Using Online Mirror Descent, Learning for Dynamics and Control (L4DC) Conference, July 15-17, 2024, Oxford, England (Oral presentation, 7.5% acceptance rate).
• S.R. Etesami, Distributed Data Placement and Content Delivery in Web Caches with Non-Metric Access Costs, Proceedings of the ACM on Web Conference, May 2024, Singapore, pp. 4340-4351 (20.2% acceptance rate).
• R.K. Velicheti, M. Bastopcu, S.R. Etesami, and T. Basar, Learning How to Strategically Disclose Information, Proc. 2024 American Control Conference (ACC), July 8-12, 2024, Toronto, Canada.
• V. Leon and S.R. Etesami, Online Reinforcement Learning in Markov Decision Process Using Linear Programming, Proc. 62st IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), December 2023, Singapore .
• T. Qin, J. Yevale, and S.R. Etesami, Communication-Efficient Local SGD for Over-parametrized Models with Partial Participation, Proc. 62st IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), December 2023, Singapore, pp. 2098-2103.
• T. Qin, S.R. Etesami, and C.A. Uribe, Decentralized Federated Learning for Over-Parameterized Models, Proc. 61st IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), December 2022, Cancun, Mexico, pp. 5200-5205.
• V. Leon, S.R. Etesami, and R. Nagi, Diffusion of Innovation under Limited-Trust Equilibrium, Proc. 61st IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), December 2022, Cancun, Mexico, pp. 3145-3150.
• M. Bastopcu, S.R. Etesami, and T. Basar, The Dissemination of Time-Varying Information Over Networked Agents with Gossiping, Proc. IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), June 2022, Espoo, Finland, pp. 934-939.
• V. Leon, S.R. Etesami, Bandit Learning for Dynamic Colonel Blotto Game with a Budget Constraint, Proc. 60th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), December 2021, Austin, Texas, pp. 3818-3823.
• T. Qin, S.R. Etesami, C.A. Uribe, Communication-Efficient Decentralized Local SGD over Undirected Networks, Proc. 60th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), December 2021, Austin, Texas, pp. 3361-3366.
• S.R. Etesami, An Optimal Control Framework for Online Job Scheduling on a Single Machine with General Cost Functions, Proc. 60th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), December 2021, Austin, Texas, pp. 6690-6695.
• S.R. Etesami, Consensus Dynamics Under Network Interruption and Effective Resistance Interdiction, Proc. 2021 American Control Conference (ACC), May 26-28, 2021, New Orleans, USA, pp. 814-819.
• A.Truong, S.R. Etesami, and N. Kiyavash, Selective Labeling in Learning with Expert Advice, Proc. 2021 American Control Conference (ACC), May 2021, New Orleans, Louisiana, pp. 2537–2542.
• Y. Ruan, A. Yekehkhani, S.R. Etesami, Online Learning for Job Scheduling on Heterogeneous Machines, Proc. 59th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), December 2020, Jiju Island, South Korea, pp. 591-596.
• S.R. Etesami, Dynamic Assortment with Limited Inventories and Set-Dependent Revenue Functions, Proc. 59th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), December 2020, Jiju Island, South Korea, pp. 3567-3572.
• S.R. Etesami, Sequential Optimization for State-Dependent Opinion Dynamics, Proc. IEEE American Control Conference (ACC), Philadelphia, PA, July 10-12, 2019, pp. 754-759.
• S.R. Etesami, W. Saad, N. Mandayam, H.V. Poor, Smart Routing in Smart Grids.Proc. 56th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), Dec 13-15, 2017; Melbourn, Australia
• S.R. Etesami, S. Bolouki, T. Basar, A. Nedic, Evolution of Public Opinion under Conformist and Manipulative Behaviors. Proc. 20th IFAC World Congress, (IFAC WC 2017), November 2017.
• S.R. Etesami, S. Bolouki, A. Nedic, T. Basar, Conformity versus Manipulation in Reputation Systems. Proc. 55th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC'16), Dec 12-14, 2016; Las Vegas, Nevada.
• S.N. Ahmadyan, S.R. Etesami, H.V. Poor, A Random Tree Search Algorithm for Nash Equilibrium in Capacitated Selfish Replication Games. Proc. 55th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC'16), Dec 12-14, 2016.
• S.R. Etesami, A. Nedic, T. Basar, Generalization of Accelerated Successive Projection Method for Convex Sets Intersection Problems. Proc. 2016 American Control Conference (ACC 2016), Boston, MA, July 6-8, 2016, pp. 4422-4427.
• S.R. Etesami, M.A. Madah-Ali, Design Cost versus Access Cost Trade-off in Distributed Storage Systems, Proc. 2016 American Control Conference (ACC 2016), Boston, MA, July 6-8, 2016, pp. 5322 - 5327.
• M. Hosseini, A. Wang, and S.R. Etesami, Energy-Budget-Compliant Cloud Video Delivery to Mobile Devices, Proc. IEEE International Conference on Communication Workshop (ICCW), June 2015, London, UK, pp. 1794 - 1799.
• S.R. Etesami, T. Basar, An Approximation Algorithm and Price of Anarchy for the Binary- Preference Capacitated Selfish Replication Game. Proc. 54th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC 2015), Japan, Osaka, Dec 15-18.
• T. Basar, S.R. Etesami, and A. Olshevsky, Fast Convergence of Quantized Consensus Using Metropolis Chains, Proc. 53rd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), December 2014, Los Angeles, CA, pp. 1458-1463.
• S.R. Etesami and T. Basar, Complexity of Equilibrium in Diffusion Games on Social Networks, Proc. 2014 American Control Conference (ACC), June 2014, Portland, OR, pp. 2077-2082.
• S.R. Etesami and T. Basar, Convergence Time for Unbiased Quantized Consensus, Proc. 52nd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), December 2013, Florence, Italy, pp. 6190-6195.
• S.R. Etesami, T. Basar, A. Nedic, and B. Touri, Termination Time of Multidimensional Hegselmann-Krause Opinion Dynamics, Proc. 2013 American Control Conference (ACC), June 2013, Washington, DC, pp. 1257-1262.

Journal Editorships

• Associate Editor, IET Smart Grid, 2018- 2024

Conferences Organized or Chaired

• 2024: General co-Chair, Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing.
• 2023: Session Organizer and Session Chair, INFORMS Annual Meeting, "Learning in Games and Applications".
• 2018-2023: Session Organizer and Session Chair, Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing.
• 2022: Workshop Organizer, C3ai Digital Transformation Institute, “Data, Learning, and Markets”.
• 2020: Session co-Chair, IEEE Control and Decision Conference (CDC), "Game Theory and Learning".
• 2021: Stream Organizer and Session Chair, International Federation of Operation Research (IFORS), "Continuous and Convex Optimization".

Service on Department Committees

• Member of the Faculty Hiring Committee
• Member of Qualification Exam Committee
• Member of Advisory Committee
• Member of Research and Scholarly Enhancement Committee
• Seminar Chair Organizer
• Member of Marketing and Outreach Committee
• Member of Graduate Committee

Honors

• James Franklin Sharp Outstanding Teaching Award (2023)
• AFOSR Young Investigator Award (2023)
• List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent in UIUC (2018-2023)
• NSF CAREER Award (2020)
• Springer Outstanding Ph.D. Thesis Award (2017)
• Best CSL Ph.D. Thesis Award in the College of Engineering at UIUC (2016)
• Member of Iran's National Elites Foundation (2009)