MATCH-UP
International Workshop on Matching Under Preferences
MATCH-UP is a series of interdisciplinary and international workshops on matching under preferences. The remit of these workshops is to explore matching problems with preferences from the perspective of algorithms and complexity, discrete mathematics, combinatorial optimization, game theory, mechanism design and economics, and thus a key objective is to bring together the research communities of the related areas. Another important aim is to convey the excitement of recent research and new application areas, exposing participants to new ideas, new techniques and new problems.
Background
Matching problems with preferences occur in widespread applications such as the assignment of
school-leavers to universities, junior doctors to hospitals, students to campus housing,
children to schools, kidney transplant patients to donors and so on.
The common thread is that individuals have preference lists over the possible outcomes and
the task is to find a matching of the participants that is in some sense optimal with respect to
these preferences. There has been a resurgence of activity in this area in recent years, with online
and mobile computing opening up new avenues of research and novel, path-breaking applications.
List of topics
The matching problems under consideration include, but are not limited to:
- two-sided matchings involving agents on both sides (e.g. college admissions, resident allocation, job markets, school choice, etc.)
- two-sided matchings involving agents and items (e.g. house allocation, course allocation, project allocation, assigning papers to reviewers, school choice, etc.)
- one-sided matchings (roommates problem, kidney exchanges, etc.)
- matching with payments (assignment game, etc.)
- online and stochastic matching models (e.g., Google Ads, ride sharing, Match.com)
- other recent applications (e.g., refugee resettlement, food banks, social housing, daycare)
Next MATCH-UP
The
8th MATCH-UP will take place in Paris between 1-3 July 2026, organised by Julien Combe, Alfred Galichon, Patrick Loiseau, Vianney Perchet, Flore Sentenac and Olivier Tercieux.
Previous MATCH-UPs
Previous workshops in the series have occurred as follows:
- MATCH-UP 2024, University of Oxford, UK, 9-11 September 2024 (57 participants)
- MATCH-UP 2022, TU Vienna, Austria, 24-26 August 2022 (59 participants, including 5 online)
- MATCH-UP 2019, Monte Verità, Ascona, Switzerland, 26-29 May 2019 (46 participants)
- MATCH-UP 2017, Microsoft Research, Cambridge, USA, 20-21 April 2017 (108 participants)
- MATCH-UP 2015, University of Glasgow, UK, 16-18 April 2015 (80 participants)
- MATCH-UP 2012, Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary, 19-20 July 2012 (68 participants)
- MATCH-UP 2008, Reykjavík University, Iceland, 6 July 2008 (41 participants)
Guiding principles
- Equal representation between the computer science and economics communities
- Mix of high-profile invited speakers and contributed talks from established and early-career researchers
- Light-touch reviewing process
- Proceedings not published formally but distributed online as informal working notes
- Possible poster session in addition
- No parallel sessions
- Workshop should occur every 2-3 years
Steering Committee
The MATCH-UP Steering Committee is responsible for ensuring the continuity of the MATCH-UP series, and that the above set of guiding principles is adhered to. They will solicit bids from the community to host MATCH-UP workshops and will select venues from among those who have expressed interest. Steering Committee members will not be directly involved in the workshop organisation (unless they themselves are a member of a local organising committee) but will delegate this task to local organising committees, offering advice as and when required.
The Steering Committee members are as follows: