Sam Taggart (he/him/his)
Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science
Oberlin College
 
King 223B
10 North Professor Street
Oberlin, Ohio 44074
Sam.Taggart@oberlin.edu
 
 
I'm an associate professor of computer science at Oberlin. My research lies at the intersection of theoretical computer science, mathematical economics, and increasingly, public policy. My theoretical work focuses on the interplay between economic incentives and statistical learning, the analysis of practical resource allocation protocols such as first-price auctions, and algorithmic tasks such as optimal pricing. I co-organize the EAAMO working group on inequality. I'm particularly excited about understanding the way policy and technology mix in the provision of public benefits and social services. I am also co-editor in chief for the SIGecom Exchanges.
 
My Curriculum Vitae
 

News:

  • (12 January 2026) I was thrilled to provide research and preparation assistance (along with Serafina Kamp) to the National Health Law Program (NHeLP) to produce a technical guide to implementation of the new work requirements for Medicaid, mandated by H.R.1 in 2025. The resource is directed at states that wish to minimize harm to applicants from technology issues during these large changes to Medicaid. The guide can be found here.
  • (14 December 2025) My co-authors and I have a paper in FOCS 2025. The paper is titled “Polynomial-Time Approximation Schemes via Utility Alignment: Unit-Demand Pricing and More,” joint with Robin Bowers, Marius Garbea, and Manolis Pountourakis. We derive the first polynomial-time approximation schemes for several important stochastic optimization problems from operations research and revenue management. The full version can be found here.
  • (8 December 2025) Rishi Patel, Manolis Pountorakis, and I published a paper in WINE 2025: “Repeated Sales with Heterogeneous Buyer Sophistication.” The paper analyzes the dynamics of markets where sellers offer personalized prices to buyers with varying levels of privacy-awareness. The full version can be found here.
  • (7 January 2024) My paper “Simple Delegated Choice,” joint with Ali Khodabakhsh and Manolis Pountourakis, appeared in SODA 2024. We analyze the effectiveness of simple managerial structures such as procurement budgets for delegation of decisonmaking power. The full version can be found here.

Publications:

  DBLP, Google Scholar  

In Preparation

Full List

Former Research Students

I have had the privilege of working with numerous excellent undergraduate research assistants. Many have subsequently gone on to doctoral study in CS or an adjacent field. Below is a non-exhaustive list.

  • Duy Le (now @ Boston University)
  • Pucheng Xiong (now @ UW Madison)
  • Brian Do (now @ Waterloo)
  • Yuanzhe Liu (now @ Rensselaer Polytechnic)
  • Robin Bowers (now @ CU Boulder)
  • Paul Lawrence (now @ Norwegian University of Science and Technology)
  • Christian Ikeokwu (now @ UC Berkeley)
  • Qia Wang (now @ UChicago)
  • Charles Cui (now @ Northwestern)
  • Yichi Zhang (now @ UW Madison)

Program Committee:

AAAI 2026, EC 2026, TheWebConf 2026, EC 2025 (SPC), AAAI 2025, WINE 2025, TheWebConf 2025, AIES 2025, EAAMO 2025, EC 2024 (SPC), AAAI 2024, WINE 2024, TheWebConf 2024, AIES 2024, EAAMO 2024, WINE 2023, EC 2023, TheWebConf 2023, AIES 2023, AAAI 2023, EAAMO 2022 (Theory Track Co-Chair), EC 2022, FAccT 2022, AAAI 2022, EAAMO 2021 (Theory Track Co-Chair), EC 2021, AAAI 2021, WINE 2020, MD4SG 2020 (Theory Track Co-Chair), EC 2020, AAAI 2020, WINE 2019, MD4SG 2019, EC 2019, MD4SG 2018, EC 2018, MD4SG 2017