Thought Leader Profile

Michael Schwarz

Chief Scientist for Waze, Google

Michael Schwarz, Ph.D., is a marketplace designer. He led the team in Google research that created the carpool platform that became the foundation for Waze Carpool (now fully launched in Israel and available as a limited pilot for some Bay Area commuters).

Michael is currently the chief scientist for Waze. Before joining Google, he was the head of an economics research unit at Yahoo labs. His most externally visible project at Yahoo was developing algorithms for setting optimal reserve prices for sponsored search auctions. In an earnings call, then-Yahoo-president Sue Decker credited this contribution to market design with increasing revenues by hundreds of millions of dollars. Michael received a Super Star award, the highest recognition at Yahoo.

Michael was on the faculty at the Harvard University Economics Department from 1999 to 2004. In 2013, he was honored with the Prize in Game Theory and Computer Science of the Game Theory Society, "awarded to the person (or persons) who have published the best paper at the interface of game theory and computer science in the last decade."

Michael's work on information disclosure received award as the best paper of those published by AEJ Micro over the past three years. His academic papers have received attention in popular press. Business Week reported that as a result of publication of a paper by Michael and two of his students, "Close-mouthed Google has opened up about AdWords since the three economists cracked its code" (March 6, 2006). Michael's work has been profiled in a number of other outlets, including on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

Speaker at FiRe 2016


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