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Accolades

Research Intern Matthieu Bouyer Awarded Prestigious Internship Medal

Published January 21, 2025

Five people in uniform with the Louis-Édouard Rivot medal
Matthieu Bouyer (2nd from the right), Professor Françoise Combes (right) © Académie des Sciences, Mathieu Baumer

The Louis-Édouard Rivot medal is awarded to students from Ecole Polytechnique in France for exceptional research internship work. This year’s medal in the field of mathematics and economics was presented to Matthieu Bouyer recognizing his research results at our MPI under supervision of Irem Portakal.

The awarded project focuses on conditional independence equilibria, an extension of the game-theoretical concept of dependency equilibrium through algebraic statistics. Building upon the foundational work of Irem Portakal and Bernd Sturmfels, which itself was inspired by the philosopher Wolfgang Spohn. They introduce a new equilibrium concept aimed at better modeling social interactions and cooperation.

Since dependency equilibria are significantly more numerous than Nash equilibria, they can be refined by intersecting them with conditional independence models from algebraic statistics. These models describe partial dependencies between players via a graph, thus providing a spectrum of equilibria ranging from "no social interaction, full independence" (Nash equilibrium) to "complete social interaction between all players" (dependency equilibrium). Conditional independence equilibria offer a new mathematical framework to study situations of partial cooperation among players.

The medal was presented by Professor Françoise Combes, a distinguished member of the French Academy of Sciences, who wore the ceremonial uniform of the academy. Matthieu Boyer and his colleagues were dressed in the traditional military uniforms of Ecole Polytechnique, worn for official ceremonies.