Rasoul Etesami

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Education

• Ph.D. Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, December 2015.
• M.Sc. Applied Mathematics, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, December 2015.
• M.Sc. Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, May 2012.

Academic Positions

• Associate Professor, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2023--present
• Affiliate Associate Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2023--present
• Affiliate Associate Professor, Coordinated Science Laboratory, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2019--present
• Assistant Professor, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2017--2023
• Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Princeton University and WINLAB, 2016-2017

Other Professional Employment

• Research Intern, Alcatel-Lucent, Bell-Labs, NJ, USA, Summer 2015.

Continuing Education

• IE 510 Applied Nonlinear Programming
• SE 590 Seminar
• IE 598 Distributed Decision Systems
• ECE 515 Control System Theory & Design
• SE 320 Control Systems
• IE 511 Integer Programming

Books Authored or Co-Authored (Original Editions)

• S.R. Etesami, "Potential-Based Analysis of Social, Communication, and Distributed Networks", Springer, March 2017.

Chapters in Books

• S.R. Etesami and T. Başar. Network games. Handbook of Dynamic Game Theory, Springer International Publishing, 2017.

Selected Articles in Journals

• A. Anjarlekar, S.R. Etesami, and R. Srikant. “Mechanism Design for Heterogeneous Differentially Private Data Acquisition for Logistic Regression.” IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, September 2026.
• P.S. Dey, S.R. Etesami, and A.D. Gopalan, “Scaling Limit of a Stochastic Clustering Model on R,” Mathematics of Operations Research (minor revision), Preprint: arXiv:2511.15089v1, August 2026.
• S. R. Etesami and R. Srikant, “A Game-Theoretic Framework for Decentralized and Uncoordinated Learning of Stable Matchings in Two-Sided Markets,” Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR), August 2026.
• F. Fardno and S.R. Etesami, A Game-Theoretic Framework for Distributed Load Balancing: Static and Dynamic Game Models, Automatica, Volume 185, 112796, 2026.
• A. Bhimaraju, S.R. Etesami, and L.R. Varshney, Dynamic Batching of Online Arrivals to Leverage Economies of Scale, European Journal of Operational Research (EJOR), Volume 328, Issue 3, pp. 749-761, 2026.
• S.R. Etesami, Learning Stationary Nash Equilibrium Policies in N-Player Stochastic Games with Independent Chains, SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization (SICON), Volume 62(2), pp. 799-825, 2024.
• T. Qin, S.R. Etesami, and C.A. Uribe, Faster Convergence of Local SGD for Over-Parameterized Models, Transactions on Machine Learning Research (TMLR), March 2024 .
• V. Leon and S.R. Etesami, Online Learning in Budget-Constrained Dynamic Colonel Blotto Games, Dynamic Games and Applications, pp. 1-23, Springer, 2023.
• S.R. Etesami, Maximizing Convergence Time in Network Averaging Dynamics Subject to Edge Removal, SIAM Journal on Optimization (SIOPT), Volume 32(4), pp. 2718-2744, 2022.
• S.R. Etesami, An Optimal Control Framework for Online Job Scheduling with General Cost Functions, Operations Research (OR), Volume 70 (5), pp. 2674-2701, 2022.
• T. Qin, S.R. Etesami, Optimal Online Algorithms for File-Bundle Caching and Generalization to Distributed Caching, ACM Transactions on Modeling and Performance Evaluation of Computing Systems (ToMPECS), Volume 6(1), pp. 1-23, 2021.
• S.R. Etesami, Complexity and Approximability of Optimal Resource Allocation and Nash Equilibrium over Networks, SIAM Journal on Optimization (SIOPT), Volume 30(1), pp. 885-914, 2020.
• S.R. Etesami, W. Saad, N. Mandayam, H.V. Poor, "Smart Routing of Electric Vehicles for Load Balancing in Smart Grids”, Automatica, Volume 120, pp. 1-14, 2020.
• S.R. Etesami, A Simple Framework for Stability Analysis of State-Dependent Networks of Heterogeneous Agents. SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization (SICON), Volume 57(3), pp. 1757-1782, May 2019.
• S.R. Etesami, W. Saad, N. Mandayam, H.V. Poor, Stochastic Games for Smart Grid Energy Management with Prospect Prosumers, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (TAC), Volume 63, Issue 8, pp. 2327 - 2342, August. 2018.
• S.R. Etesami, T. Basar, Price of Anarchy and an Approximation Algorithm for the Binary-Preference Capacitated Selfish Replication Game, Automatica, Volume 76, pp. 153-163, February 2017.
• T. Basar, S.R. Etesami, A. Olshevsky, Convergence Time of Quantized Metropolis Consensus Over Time-Varying Networks, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (TAC), Volume 61, Issue 12, pp. 4048 - 4054, December 2016.
• S.R. Etesami, T. Basar, Complexity of Equilibrium in Competitive Diffusion Games on Social Networks, Automatica, Volume 68, pp. 100-110, June 2016.
• S.R. Etesami, T. Basar, Convergence Time for Unbiased Quantized Consensus Over Static and Dynamic Networks, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (TAC), 61(2), pp. 443-455, February 2016.
• S.R. Etesami, T. Basar, Game-Theoretic Analysis of the Hegselmann-Krause Model for Opinion Dynamics in Finite Dimensions, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (TAC), Volume 60, Issue 7, pp. 1886-1897, July 2015.

Articles in Conference Proceedings

• A. Anjarlekar, S.R. Etesami, and R. Srikant, “Scalable Policy-Based RL Algorithms for POMDPs,” Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 38 (NeurIPS 2025), pp. 107052–107087, December 2025, San Diego & Mexico City (24.5% acceptance rate).
• S.R. Etesami and R. Srikant, Decentralized and Uncoordinated Learning of Stable Matchings: A Game-Theoretic Approach, The 39th Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), February 2025, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (Oral presentation, 4.7% acceptance rate).
• E. Ma, C. Pan, S.R. Etesami, H. Zhao, and O. Milenkovic, FedGTST: Boosting Global Transferability of Federated Models via Statistics Tuning, Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), December 2024, Vancouver, Canada (25.8 % acceptance rate).
• S.R. Etesami, Multi-item Resource Allocation for Maximizing Social Welfare under Network Externalities, Proceedings of the 25th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC), July 2024, New Haven, Connecticut (24% acceptance rate).
• T. Qin and S.R. Etesami, Learning ϵ-Nash Equilibrium Policies in Stochastic Games with Unknown Independent Chains Using Online Mirror Descent, Learning for Dynamics and Control (L4DC) Conference, July 15-17, 2024, Oxford, England (Oral presentation, 7.5% acceptance rate).
• S.R. Etesami, Distributed Data Placement and Content Delivery in Web Caches with Non-Metric Access Costs, Proceedings of the ACM on Web Conference, May 2024, Singapore, pp. 4340-4351 (20.2% acceptance rate).
• T. Qin, S.R. Etesami, and C.A. Uribe, Decentralized Federated Learning for Over-Parameterized Models, Proc. 61st IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), December 2022, Cancun, Mexico, pp. 5200-5205.
• V. Leon, S.R. Etesami, and R. Nagi, Diffusion of Innovation under Limited-Trust Equilibrium, Proc. 61st IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), December 2022, Cancun, Mexico, pp. 3145-3150.
• S.R. Etesami, Consensus Dynamics Under Network Interruption and Effective Resistance Interdiction, Proc. 2021 American Control Conference (ACC), May 26-28, 2021, New Orleans, USA, pp. 814-819.
• S.R. Etesami, M.A. Madah-Ali, Design Cost versus Access Cost Trade-off in Distributed Storage Systems, Proc. 2016 American Control Conference (ACC 2016), Boston, MA, July 6-8, 2016, pp. 5322 - 5327.
• T. Basar, S.R. Etesami, and A. Olshevsky, Fast Convergence of Quantized Consensus Using Metropolis Chains, Proc. 53rd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), December 2014, Los Angeles, CA, pp. 1458-1463.
• S.R. Etesami and T. Basar, Convergence Time for Unbiased Quantized Consensus, Proc. 52nd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), December 2013, Florence, Italy, pp. 6190-6195.
• S.R. Etesami, T. Basar, A. Nedic, and B. Touri, Termination Time of Multidimensional Hegselmann-Krause Opinion Dynamics, Proc. 2013 American Control Conference (ACC), June 2013, Washington, DC, pp. 1257-1262.

Journal Editorships

• Associate Editor, IET Smart Grid, 2018- 2024

Conferences Organized or Chaired

• 2024: General co-Chair, Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing.
• 2023: Session Organizer and Session Chair, INFORMS Annual Meeting, "Learning in Games and Applications".
• 2018-2023: Session Organizer and Session Chair, Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing.
• 2022: Workshop Organizer, C3ai Digital Transformation Institute, “Data, Learning, and Markets”.
• 2020: Session co-Chair, IEEE Control and Decision Conference (CDC), "Game Theory and Learning".
• 2021: Stream Organizer and Session Chair, International Federation of Operation Research (IFORS), "Continuous and Convex Optimization".

Service on Department Committees

• Member of the Faculty Hiring Committee
• Member of Qualification Exam Committee
• Member of Advisory Committee
• Member of Research and Scholarly Enhancement Committee
• Seminar Chair Organizer
• Member of Marketing and Outreach Committee
• Member of Graduate Committee

Honors

• James Franklin Sharp Outstanding Teaching Award (2023)
• AFOSR Young Investigator Award (2023)
• List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent in UIUC (2018-2023)
• NSF CAREER Award (2020)
• Springer Outstanding Ph.D. Thesis Award (2017)
• Best CSL Ph.D. Thesis Award in the College of Engineering at UIUC (2016)
• Member of Iran's National Elites Foundation (2009)