Inbal Talgam-Cohen's Website

About

Welcome - I'm Inbal, a professor of computer science at Tel Aviv University.
I explore how incentives shape algorithms, learning, and AI systems, through an interdisciplinary approach at the intersection of theoretical computer science, microeconomics, and law.
I'm interested in the design and analysis of algorithms with economic and societal applications.
My research area is called algorithmic game theory.
I am particularly passionate about algorithmic contract design. [Survey] [Tutorial]

I'm a recipient of the Google Research Scholar Award and the Krill Prize.
I recently joined The Center for Applied Research on Risks to Democracy.
I'm also a visiting faculty member at the Technion, where I was fortunate to start my career as a professor before moving to Tel Aviv University. My research group currently spans both institutes.

More info: [Bio]

Inbal Talgam-Cohen is a computer science professor whose interdisciplinary work spans computer science, economics and law. She received her PhD in computer science from Stanford University, followed by a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellowship, and in addition holds a law LLB. Inbal’s recognitions include the Best Doctoral Dissertation Award from ACM SIGecom, a Google Scholar Award, the Krill Prize, an ERC grant, and the Best Student Paper Award at the ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC). She is a Senior Fellow of the Microsoft AI Economy Institute (2025 Fall Cohort), and is part of the AI Security Institute's 2026 Alignment Project. Inbal currently serves on the editorial board of SIAM Journal on Computing (SICOMP), and leads the technology program at TAU’s Center for Risks to Democracy. Previously, she interned at Microsoft Research and Yahoo! Labs, and clerked for Hon. Justice Esther Hayut of the Israeli Supreme Court.

[CV]

Publications: [Google Scholar] [DBLP]

Social: [LinkedIn] [X]

Education

PhD in Computer Science, Stanford University
MSc in Computer Science, Weizmann Institute of Science
BSc in Computer Science, Tel Aviv University
LLB in Law, Tel Aviv University

Funding

I gratefully acknowledge support from the following sources:

ERC grant "Algorithmic Contract Design - ALGOCONTRACT" (2023-2028)
ISF grant "Contract Design, Machine Learning and Statistical Inference" (2024-2028)
AI Security Institute (AISI) Alignment Project, 2026
Microsoft AI Economy Institute (AIEI) Fellowship, Fall 2025 Cohort
NSF-BSF grant "Algorithmic Persuasion", joint with Yakov Babichenko and Haifeng Xu

I am also grateful for past support from an ISF grant ("Complexity in Markets – Beyond Worst-Case Analysis"), several Israel Council for Higher Education prizes, and a Taub Family Foundation Leader in Science and Technology Fellowship.

News

Apr 2026: Honored to speak about "Algorithmic Contract Design: Recent Progress" in a workshop celebrating Aumann on the occasion of 20 years since his Nobel.
Dec 2025: Our lab in Ynet's Private Investigators (in Hebrew)!
May 2025: Congratulations to Konstantin Zabaranyi for receiving the Best Dissertation award for his PhD thesis "Information Design in the 21st Century: A CS Perspective"!

Selected service

Associate Editor, SIAM Journal on Computing (SICOMP)
Steering Committee, CS+Law Workshop Series
Co-organizer of the 2026 SIGecom Winter Meeting
Co-organizer of the SafeToC initiative for combatting harassment
Editor-in-Chief, ACM SIGecom Exchanges (2020-2022)

Committees:

STOC’26 Program Committee
EC'26 Senior Program Committee
Chair of Evaluation Committee, Breakthrough Research 2026, Ministry of Science
EC'24 Theory Track Chair
WINE'21 Program Committee Co-Chair