This CEO Is Using Game Theory To Solve Complex Business Problems And Her Work Won Her An Emmy
23 October 2024
Silvia Console Battilana is the CEO and cofounder at Auctionomics, a high-stakes auction technology company that uses game theory to solve complex business problems. She even has a technical Emmy Award for her work, but she says none of this would have happened had she not immigrated to the United States from Italy for her PhD and taken class with Paul Milgrom at Stanford.
Auctionomics Accepts Emmy Award for Designing Historic $19B FCC Incentive Auction
9 October 2024
On Thursday, Auctionomics CEO and co-founder Silvia Console Battilana accepted an Emmy Award on behalf of her co-founder Paul Milgrom, Auctionomics computer scientist Neil Newman, Stanford President Jon Levin, University of British Columbia Professor of Computer Science Kevin Leyton-Brown, Stanford Economist Ilya Segal, and the entire Auctionomics team.
The little-known company dominating market design
7 October 2024
On Wednesday, Paul Milgrom will become the first Nobel economics laureate to win an Emmy, in a sign of just how omnipresent his field of auction design has become. Milgrom's company, Auctionomics, has quietly come to dominate the industry of market design, which encompasses auction design and which co-founder Silvia Console Battilana describes as "a little secret you have never heard of that influences your everyday life."
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The Nobel-, Emmy-winning genius who became Google’s star antitrust witness
2 October 2024
Just before Google wrapped up the recent three-week US antitrust trial, it called a star witness to the stand who has won a Nobel prize and an Emmy. The unusual combination of accolades (and there are more) belongs to Paul Milgrom, a Stanford economist known for revolutionizing the field of auctions, and, in the last few years, trying to solve California’s water shortage. Milgrom’s company, Auctionomics, is at the forefront of an increasingly important field, sometimes referred to as market design, that is set to play an outsized role in the next AI-enabled wave of commerce.
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Parents shouldn't have to choose between their children and their career
2 June 2024
Our CEO and co-founder Silvia Console Battilana spoke with the Financial Times about how Auctionomics supports new families with our 2-week night nanny policy. Night nannies provide critical support for parents during the delicate first weeks of a child's life by helping them balance the demands of being both professionals and caretakers without sacrificing their personal health or the wellbeing of their children. The majority of Auctionomics employees who have had children while at the company have benefited from this perk and we've seen it pay dividends in terms of their career growth and enhancing the quality time they get to spend with their family.
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Auctionomics Advisor Jonathan Levin Named Stanford President
4 April 2024
Congratulations to Professor Jonathan Levin who was today appointed as the new president of Stanford University. Prior to his appointment, Professor Levin led the Stanford Graduate School of Business as its dean for the past eight years and has been an invaluable auction strategist and designer Auctionomics. In his work as a consultant for Auctionomics, Professor Levin has advised a bidder in Canada and was instrumental in our work on the historic $19 billion FCC incentive auction in 2017. Auctionomics is honored to have had the opportunity to work with such an esteemed economist who will always remain one of the best strategists our company has ever had. We wish him continued success in his new role as President of Stanford University.
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Auctionomics has been awarded a Technology & Engineering Emmy Award by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences
21 February 2024
Auctionomics is thrilled to announce that we have been awarded a Technology & Engineering Emmy Award by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for our work on the FCC's historic $19B broadcast incentive auction. This Emmy Award recognizes Auctionomics' innovative auction design that transformed the television industry in two critical ways. First, our platform enabled broadcasters to voluntarily relinquish underutilized spectrum in exchange for once-in-a-lifetime incentive payments while earning the US Treasury billions in revenue. By optimizing complex sets of constraints and objectives with advanced analytics and computation, our cutting-edge auction platform transformed the very structure of the television industry, forever changing the ways that society produces, distributes, and consumes media.. Winning an Emmy Award – the highest accolade in the television industry – is an extraordinary honor that validates our peerless approach to auction design and implementation. To learn more about, please visit the Emmy website.
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Eric Tang has become a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow
24 April 2023
Eric Tang, an analyst at Auctionomics, has been named an NSF Graduate Research Fellow. The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) recognizes roughly 2,000 graduate students each year with funding for graduate degrees at U.S. universities. It is a highly selective fellowship which attracts roughly 14,000 applicants each year, and many recipients of the NSF GRFP go on to become leaders in their respective fields. Eric will begin his Ph.D. in Economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business this fall.
The world needs more water flowing where it’s needed most
7 March 2023
Auctionomics co-founders Silvia Console Battilana and Paul Milgrom, with DCVC co-founder Zachary Bogue, have authored an op-ed in the Boston Globe on the growing need to reallocate water in the American West and across the globe. They highlight the problems with current water rights – growing demand, shrinking supply, and antiquated systems – but also describe promising solutions, including improved market design, better incentives, and deep tech tools for more accurate water measurement.
How markets can help spur innovation to solve the water crisis
7 February 2022
Our co-founders, Paul Milgrom and Silvia Console Battilana, and DCVC managing partner Zachary Bogue publish a piece for the World Economic Forum on how market design and novel technologies can help solve water scarcity."
Photo Credit: Lisa Wiseman
Meet Auctionomics, the Startup Behind the Market Designs That Affect Your Everyday Life
18 November 2021
Yahoo! Finance surveys Auctionomics’ origins and its contributions to markets as diverse as spectrum, gas, fishing rights, and online advertising. Auctionomics CEO and co-founder Silvia Console Battilana describes the company’s expansive visions to address water shortages via smart water markets. Drawing on her own experience, Battilana also offers encouragement and advice to other women pursuing careers in STEM.
Female Disruptors: Silvia Console Battilana Auctionomics On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry
14 November 2021
In this interview, Auctionomics co-founder and CEO Silvia Console Battilana explains how a request from the U.S. Department of the Treasury led her and co-founder Paul Milgrom to launch Auctionomics. Battilana also discusses some of the best business advice she has received, the potential promise of rethinking water rights, and why Matt Damon would make a great Davos co-panelist.
The Nobel Prize Winner Who Created a Better Auction: A Conversation With Paul Milgrom
14 October 2021
This is an interesting article published in The Wall Street Journal where journalist Thomas Gryta interviews Prof. Paul Milgrom and goes through many interesting topics like how this economist helped the FCC raising billions auctioning wireless licenses.
Market design can help solve global water scarcity
27 July 2021
In 2010, the US faced a challenging allocation problem. Demand was surging for a resource vital to daily life, but the available supply was being used by incumbents that had built an important industry around it. Moreover, incremental transfers to new uses were impossible. Could new rules alleviate growing scarcities while respecting existing users’ rights and enable a voluntary, multi-party reallocation?
FCC Chairman Pai congratulates winners of the 2020 Nobel prize in Economics
13 October 2020
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai today congratulated the winners of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson. Their work has made possible the extraordinary success of U.S. radiofrequency spectrum auctions, which have generated over $100 billion for the U.S. Treasury and brought reliable, high-speed digital connectivity to hundreds of millions of Americans. “Thanks to the brilliance of these extraordinarily talented economists, the United States has
seen enormous benefits to society from the development of successful spectrum auctions,” Chairman Pai said.
The economist: The Nobel prize in economics rewards advances in auction theory
12 October 2020
As a result the researchers are more enmeshed in real-world problems than the typical prizewinner. Mr Milgrom advised Time Warner and Comcast, telecommunications firms, on their participation in radio-spectrum auctions in 2006; the work helped save his clients more than $1bn. In 2009 he co-founded a firm, Auctionomics, that provides consulting services to those looking to operate and to bid in auctions.
It is a different sort of work from that which many aspiring academics imagine themselves pursuing. But if that is not inducement enough for young scholars to think about the returns to also donning an engineer’s cap, the prize-giving committee's admiration might well be. This year’s Nobel award is the third since 2007 to honour “mechanism design”, or the use of economic principles to design markets in order to solve real-world problems.
Auctionomics co-founder Paul Milgrom wins Nobel prize
12 October 2020 - On Monday morning Paul Milgrom, the co-founder of Auctionomics and a professor at Stanford University, was awarded the 2020 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
He was woken up by Bob Wilson, who lives across the street and won the Nobel with him. Bob and his wife knocked saying “the Nobel committee is trying to reach you”. The Nest camera captured the surprise announcement.
At the same time Paul’s head of software development at Auctionomics, Yago Saez, was calling Paul’s co-founder dr Console Battilana in California from Spain saying “this is the call”. “What call?” “THE call”.
Paul, Bob and two other members of the Auctionomics team started celebrating in the back yard by the fire pit, shortly joined by the Stanford media team.Some Nobel prizes are awarded for work that is purely theoretical, but Professor Milgrom’s work has changed the lives of everyday consumers across the globe. Each time that you use a cellphone, your mobile operator uses a certain bandwidth to transmit that information – picture invisible highways in the sky. The rights to access that bandwidth are sold worldwide in spectrum auctions. These auctions exist largely because Paul Milgrom asserted that is was possible to do so, and offered the world a blueprint for successful spectrum allocation: in 1993 Milgrom walked into a meeting at the Federal Communications Commission with a floppy disk in his hand that contained a coded “Simultaneous Multiple Round auction” featured an activity rule that he had invented. Founded upon this proof of concept, what was thought impossible – the simultaneous competitive sale of many geographic spectrum licenses – has since became standard practice, with hundreds of billions of dollars raised in spectrum auctions worldwide.
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Paul finds out from his advisor and co-Nobel winner Bob Wilson he won the Nobel
12 October 2020 - On Monday morning Paul Milgrom, the co-founder of Auctionomics and a professor at Stanford University, was awarded the 2020 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
He was woken up by Bob Wilson, who lives across the street and won the Nobel with him. Bob and his wife knocked saying “the Nobel committee is trying to reach you”. The Nest camera captured the surprise announcement.
The Market Design Community and the Broadcast Incentive Auction: Fact-Checking Glen Weyl’s and Stefano Feltri’s False Claims
3 June 2020 - In a recent Twitter rant and a pair of subsequent articles in Promarket, Glen Weyl and Stefano Feltri invent a conspiratorial narrative surrounding the 2017 broadcast incentive auction. We fact-check the articles.
Paul Milgrom, Distinguished Fellow 2020
29 Apr 2020 - Prof. Paul Milgrom, Auctionomics co-founder, has been elected today as a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association for 2020. Congratulations on being considered for this distinction and honor! We look forward to the AEA Awards Ceremony that will be held on January 4 during the 2021 ASSA Meeting.
Auctionomics support in tough times
14 Mar 2020 - Auctionomics is thankful to all the front line doctors and is donating thousands of masks to doctors bay are hospitals. Here our CEO is delivering 2000 kn95 masks to Stanford Hospital.
Why Paul Milgrom is an Economist you should know
12 Feb 2018 - If you want to know why Paul Milgrom is an Economist you should know, then you can't miss reading this article from Evan Peterson at OpenMarkets, "Paul Milgrom’s work in economics has made him a giant in the field. He’s developed world-changing ideas on game theory, auction theory and market design at places like Northwestern, Yale and Stanford".
If you want to know you can also watch this video:
Prof. Paul Milgrom wins CME Group-MSRI and John J. Carty Award Prize
14 Jan 2018 - Auctionomics co-founder and chairman Paul Milgrom has been awarded both the 2017 CME Group-MSRI Prize in Innovative Quantitative Applications, from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange & Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, and the 2018 John J. Carty Award for the Advancement of Science, from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
The John J. Carty Award is presented biennially "to recognize noteworthy and distinguished accomplishments in any field of science within the National Academy of Science’s charter." The 2018 award was presented jointly to Professor Milgrom, Robert B. Wilson and David M. Kreps "For making fundamental advances to game theory by showing how incomplete information alters equilibrium outcomes." The award citation further states: "Their advances enhance our understanding the impact of reputation and the emergence of cooperation. The resulting insights enrich the analysis and application of auctions for allocating scarce resources."
In describing the contributions of the recipients, the National Academy of Sciences highlighted their work on auction design: "Later, the entire modern telecommunications industry arose out of an auction format developed by Milgrom and Wilson, along with Preston McAfee, for the 1994 radio spectrum auctions by the Federal Communications Commission. The simultaneous ascending auction format, in which each bidder can bid for multiple licenses over a series of rounds so long as it remains “sufficiently active,” has since been used around the world to allocate hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of wireless licenses. Variations of the format have also been applied to numerous other industries, including electricity markets and various commodity markets."
To Improve Wireless Networks, Auction the Airwaves
24 Jul 2017 - Don't miss this interesting article written by Scott Duke Kominers for Bloomberg. People are watching TV on devices, so mobile companies need more spectrum and broadcasters need less. Here's how to get there.
Read this article about how AI helped auction off $19 billion worth of radio spectrum
26 Jun 2017 - Auctionomics team members, Kevin Leyton-Brown, Paul Milgrom and Ilya Segal have designed an artificial intelligence system for the incentive auction which serves as an example of how computer science and artificial intelligence are now necessary to handle the day-to-day processes and demands of our world. In the past, with less complex products to sell, governments and economists could have made an auction work on their own. In this case,
Paul Milgrom is interviewed and warns of the dangers of protectionism
6 Jun 2017 - Read this interesting interview in which Prof. Paul Milgrom talks about the dangers of protectionism, game theory basic concepts, or the situation of the Spanish economy, among other relevant topics.
How obscure science led to spectrum auctions that connected the world
30 Apr 2017 - Prof. Paul Milgrom explains how 30 years of economic research helped shape wireless networks. Don't miss this article published on The Hill.
Interview to Silvia Console Battilana (Auctionomics CEO), held during the World Economic Forum 2017, and published on Business Insider
20 Jan 2017 - Lianna Brinded, from Business Insider journal interviewed Dr. Silvia Console Battilana, CEO and co-founder of the Silicon Valley-based company Auctionomics, which combines economic theory and online auctions.
Auctionomics team members Jonathan Levin and Andrzej Skrzypacz explain how CCA auctions can be gamed
12 Dec 2016 - Why do some companies pay less for broadcast and wireless spectrum? Companies with the right expert auction advice pay less for broadcast and wireless spectrum because they are able to game the combinatorial clock auction rules.
The New York Times talking about the historical auction designed by the Auctionomics team
29 Nov 2016 - The New York Times describes the historical auction designed by the Auctionomics team as "an auction that could transform local media".
Auctionomics CEO Silvia Console Battilana is awarded 40 under 40 European leaders
28 Oct 2016 - Congratulations to Dr. Silvia Console Battilana, Auctionomics CEO, who has been awarded as young global leader 2017. She looks forward to working together with this amazing group of individuals selected by 11 former prime ministers – among them Carl Bildt, and incoming UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
The Spectrum Auction: How Economists Saved the Day
24 Aug 2016 - Priceonomics has published an interesting article about spectrum auctions which includes, among others, statements such as "Milgrom is well positioned to know. Once again, he has played the role of market designer" or when talking about the incentive auction: "he reshaped an entire industry and gave governments around the world a tool to collect hundreds of billions of dollars in extra revenue."
Jonathan Levin Named Dean of Stanford Graduate School of Business
23 May 2016 - Prof. Jon Levin, the former chair of the Stanford Department of Economics and a renowned expert in the field of industrial organization, will be the tenth dean of Stanford Graduate School of Business. “Jonathan is an outstanding teacher, a skilled and innovative administrator, and a brilliant scholar who has deep understanding of both the academic enterprise and the workings of industry and government,” Etchemendy said. In addition to his academic research, Levin has consulted for a number of Fortune 500 companies as well as the Federal Communications Commission and the U.S. Treasury. He was part of the expert group that designed the first vaccine Advanced Market Commitment, and was one of the economists who participated in the design of the FCC’s broadcast incentive auction.
Paul Milgrom — Prices and Auctions in Markets with Complex Constraints
11 May 2016 - Prof. Paul Milgrom was in charge of the 33rd annual Nancy L. Schwartz Memorial Lecture that took place past February the 17th on the Kellogg’s School of Management Center for Game Theory and Economic Behavior. The lecture series is named in honor of Nancy Schwartz, Kellogg's first woman faculty member appointed to an endowed chair. In its illustrious history, the series has featured 14 Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences laureates.
Auctionomics co-founder Milgrom and the rest of the Auctionomics design team make news
28 April 2016 - As published by Krysten Crawford in SIEPR highlights, Prof. Paul Milgrom pulled together an interdisciplinary “dream team” of top experts in economics and computer science: Jonathan Levin, also a SIEPR senior fellow and faculty member in economics; Ilya Segal, a professor of economics at Stanford; and Kevin Leyton-Brown, a computer scientist at the University of British Columbia who earned his PhD from Stanford. As it turns out, there are roughly 2.7 million ways in which a channel reassignment could cause interference. They came up with a solution that can resolve any interference issue in less than one minute 98 percent of the time.
IMF 25 top economists: Jon Levin
27 August 2014 - As published in The International Business Times, The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has identified twenty-five young economists who it expects will shape the world’s thinking about the global economy in the future. In this list we can find one of our affiliates, Jonathan Levin. Congratulations Jon!
Prof. Paul Milgrom is honoured with Golden Goose Award
July 17, 2014 - Robert Wilson, Paul Milgrom and R. Preston McAfee, whose basic research on game theory and auctions enabled the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to first auction spectrum licenses in 1994, were announced today as recipients of the 2014 Golden Goose Award. They will receive their awards on September 18 at the third annual Golden Goose Awards ceremony…
Golden Goose Award
July 17, 2014 - Robert Wilson, Paul Milgrom and R. Preston McAfee, whose basic research on game theory and auctions enabled the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to first auction spectrum licenses in 1994, were announced today as recipients of the 2014 Golden Goose Award.
The 2014 Golden Goose Awards from DOCUinc on Vimeo.
Jon Levin awarded the 2014 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship
April 10, 2014 - Congratulations to Jon Levin, who was one of only two economists to win a Guggenheim fellowship in this year’s competition! Jon proposes to use his fellowship to study competition in health care. Guggenheim Fellowships are grants to selected individuals made for a minimum of six months and a maximum of twelve months. The Foundation understands…
Kevin Leyton-Brown receives 2013 CAC/AIC Outstanding Young Computer Science Researcher Prize
March 25, 2014 – UBC Computer Science Associate Professor Kevin Leyton-Brown is the recipient of a 2013 Canadian Association of Computer Science (CASC/AIC) Outstanding Young Computer Science Researcher Prize. The award recognizes young computer science faculty members at Canadian universities within 10 years of their Ph.D who have made significant contributions in their research careers. Kevin was one of three eligible Canadian computer scientists who were selected for the prize. He is the 11th computer scientist to win since this prize was established in 1965. Congratulations Kevin!
Kevin Leyton-Brown receives NSERC E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship
February 3, 2014 – Prof. Kevin Leyton-Brown, a Stanford University graduate and winner of a 2014 Steacie Memorial Fellowship is working at the intersection of computer science and microeconomics to develop mathematical theories and algorithms that will benefit both buyers and sellers by improving how markets make decisions. An algorithm arising from Dr. Leyton-Brown’s research is the top contender for use in the United States government’s upcoming $50 billion “incentive auction” of broadcast airwaves, which is likely to be replicated worldwide. NSERC’s top researchers in the natural sciences and engineering are honoured each year for a wide range of achievements that showcase the research talent and innovation taking place in Canadian universities.
Paul Milgrom wins the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awar in the Economics, Finance and Management category (5th edition)
July, 1, 2013 – The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Economics, Finance and Management category goes in this fifth edition to U.S. mathematician Paul Milgrom “for his seminal contributions to an unusually wide range of fields of economics including auctions, market design, ...
FCC announces Paul Milgrom and other leading auction experts to advise commission on incentive auction design and implementation
March 27, 2012 – FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said, “I am delighted to have this world-class team of experts advising the Commission on this historic undertaking. Our plan is to ensure that incentive auctions serve as an effective market mechanism to unleash more spectrum for mobile broadband and help address the looming spectrum crunch. Our implementation of this new Congressional mandate will be guided by the economics, and will seek to maximize the opportunity to unleash investment and innovation, benefit consumers, drive economic growth, and enhance our global competitiveness. The knowledge and experience of this team will complement the substantial expertise of agency staff to meet these goals.”
The full press release is available here.
Paul Milgrom mention in the New York Times
September 19, 2011 - Paul’s 20-year-old research on incentives was mentioned in an article published on September 19 in the New York Times. According to the article, too much pressure to improve students’ test scores can reduce attention to other aspects of the curriculum and discourage cultivation of broader problem-solving skills, also known as “teaching to the test.” The economists Bengt Holmstrom and Paul…
Reed Hundt, former chairmain of the FCC, joins the board of Advisors
Reed Hundt visited the Auctionomics office and joined the Auctionomics board of advisors. Hundt was the chairman of the United States Federal Communications Commission when the first major auction for radio spectrum was desgined and run, and a member of Obama’s transition team.
The Economist Magazine
September 16th, 2011 – Paul’s work as a bidding adviser is given a nice mention in the September 3, 2011 issue of The Economist magazine. According to the article, “In the run-up to an online auction in 2006 of radio-spectrum licences by America’s Federal Communications Commission, Paul Milgrom, a consultant and Stanford University professor, customised his game-theory software to assist a consortium of bidders. The result was a triumph.
When the auction began, Dr Milgrom’s software tracked competitors’ bids to estimate their budgets for the 1,132 licences on offer. Crucially, the software estimated the secret values bidders placed on specific licences and determined that certain big licences were being overvalued. It directed Dr Milgrom’s clients to obtain a patchwork of smaller, less expensive licences instead. Two of his clients, Time Warner and Comcast, paid about a third less than their competitors for equivalent spectrum, saving almost $1.2 billion.”
The article unfortunately failed to mention that the this consulting project was a joint effort by three Stanford professors. The two others were Jonathan Levin and Jeremy Bulow.
May 15, 2011 - On May 9-10, Paul was in Santiago, Chile to advocate the creation of individual transferable fishing quotas (ITQs) and the use of auctions to assign at least half of them. (Chilean law authorizes auctions only for half of the fishing rights.) The use of auctions would not change the total allowable catch, but would open the door to new entry by more efficient firms. Currently, entry is blockaded by a handful of firms that control all the rights. Not only would auctions enhance efficiency, but they would also capture a portion of the value of fishing rights for the Chilean population, just as radio spectrum auctions have promoted efficiency and captured value in many countries.
El Mercurio newspaper published an interview with Paul on May 10, which can be found here.
Paul's Interview on CNBC-e
March 28th, 2011 – Paul was interviewed on Turkish television last week, discussing the economic challenges that Turkey faces, particularly in its telecom sector.
March 16, 2011 - Paul Milgrom of Stanford University and Auctionomics, Inc. delivered the Berglas Lecture for 2011 at Tel Aviv University. The topic is the importance of budget constraints in auctions. Watch a video of the talk here(courtesy of Tel Aviv University).
Milgrom interview in Conjuntura Econômica (Brasil)
February 25, 2011 - Prof. Milgrom is interviewed in Conjuntura Econômica, a prominent business/economics journal in Brasil. “It is a consensus among Economists that Paul Milgrom´s contributions on Auction Theory, Game Theory, Organizational Economics and Finance put him on a short-list for the Nobel Prize in Economics. On top of his academic contributions, Milgrom has also had a key…
Veja Magazin Interview
February 5th, 2011 - Paul was featured this month in Brazil’s Veja magazine, which with over 1 million subscribers is the largest circulation magazine in South America.
Auctionomics is awarded a National Science Foundation grant
September 22, 2009 - Auctionomics has been awarded an SBIR (Small Business Innovative Research) from the National Science Foundation grant to develop the technology of using budgets in multi-product auctions.