David Kempe

David Kempe is a Professor of Computer Science in the Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering. He earned his Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science from the University of Karlsruhe, Master's Degree in Computer Science from Cornell University, and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell University in 2003. Kempe joined the USC Computer Science faculty in the Fall of 2004 and has held positions including the Robert G. and Mary G. Lane Endowed Early Career Chair in 2007. His career at USC includes recognition through the VSoE Junior Research Award in 2007 and multiple mentoring honors.

Kempe's research centers on algorithms and theoretical computer science, with specific emphasis on social networks, topics at the intersection of economics and computing, algorithmic learning, auctions and mechanism design, online learning and feature selection, randomized algorithms, and information flow through networks. Notable publications include "Maximizing the Spread of Influence through a Social Network" (KDD 2003, ACM SIGKDD Best Paper Award 2003 and Test of Time Award 2014), "Incentivizing Exploration" (ACM Conference on Economics and Computation 2014, Best Paper Award), "Approximate Submodularity and its Applications: Subset Selection, Sparse Approximation and Dictionary Selection" (ICML 2011, Distinguished Paper Award), "Stability and Multigroup Fairness in Ranking with Uncertain Predictions" (ICML 2024), and "Proportional Representation in Metric Spaces and Low-Distortion Committee Selection" (AAAI 2024). His Google Scholar profile shows over 25,000 citations. Kempe has received the NSF CAREER Award (2005), NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship (2004), Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award (2008), Sloan Research Fellowship (2009), Okawa Foundation Research Grant (2012), ACM Conference on Economics and Computation Best Paper Award (2014), ICML Distinguished Paper Award (2011), USC Parents Council Teaching and Mentoring Award Honorable Mention (2009), and USC Mellon Award for Excellence in Mentoring (2009). His research has been funded by NSF grants including CAREER 0545855 and CCF-1423618, ARO MURI W911NF1810208, and others, impacting areas like influence maximization, security games, and networked public goods.

Professional Email: clkempe@usc.edu