Computer science graduate student Renato Paes Leme has been awarded a Microsoft Research Fellowship to pursue research that may make online advertising a bit more efficient and profitable.

"The competition for this fellowship is intense, the recognition of the fellowship will be a tremendous asset to both to Renato and to Cornell," said Éva Tardos, the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Computer Science and Paes Leme's adviser. "It is also a great recognition of the quality and the potential impact of his work in understanding the auctions used for selling Internet advertising."

Paes Leme is using a blend of techniques from economics, computer science and mathematics to model and analyze properties of the auction methods used to sell advertisements for Web pages. The ads on Google, Facebook and other Internet leaders are sold by electronic auctions conducted in milliseconds, where businesses whose products match search keywords bid for the best positions on the page. Paes Leme aims to analyze advertiser behavior and provide theoretical guarantees of revenue and "social welfare" for those auction mechanisms.

"Social welfare is a measure of general 'happiness' of the players in the system -- including advertisers and the search engine," Paes Leme explained. "You can think of it in terms of the value that the system generates to society as a whole."

Microsoft Research Fellowships are given to outstanding Ph.D. students in computer science, electrical engineering or math. The program includes full tuition and fees, a living stipend for two years and travel expenses for conferences.

A native of Brazil, Paes Leme received his B.Eng. in computer engineering at Instituto Militar de Engenharia and M.Sc. in mathematics from Instituto de Matematica Pura e Aplicada, both in Rio de Janeiro. He is currently a visiting student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, working with Tardos, who is there on sabbatical.