Power Auctions

Dr. Ausubel is Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland where his research focuses on spectrum and other auctions, bargaining, credit cards, industrial organization, and financial markets. He is the author of several highly-cited academic articles on efficient auction design, one of which proposes a format that has become known in the literature as the “Ausubel Auction”. He also has 22 US patents and several published patent applications relating to auction design and implementation.

In addition to his academic work, Professor Ausubel is founder and chairman of Power Auctions. He served as a member of the design team for the FCC Incentive Auction and is an author of “Incentive Auction Rules Option and Discussion” (Appendix C to the FCC’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking). Besides the FCC, he advises the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Industry Canada, the ACMA (Australia), and several NGOs and corporations. He was President of Market Design Inc. from 2003 until its dissolution in 2016.

Kathy Jacobson is a senior system analyst, and has worked for Power Auctions for nine years. During that time, she has worked extensively on many high-stakes Internet based auctions, with experience including defining initial software capability, designing upgrades, managing the testing teams, and providing much of the system documentation. Clients have included ISO New England, EDF, E.ON, Electrabel, Gaz de France, DONG Energy, the US Federal Aviation Administration and the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Before Power Auctions, she managed software teams responsible for statistical survey research applications (Westat), funds transfer (Byad, Inc.), assisted a number of Fortune 100 companies as an IT consultant for New Resources Corporation, and designed software to network the many computer systems at Baxter International. Ms. Jacobson holds a Master of Management from Northwestern University, with an emphasis in Information Technology.

Mr. Ashcroft has over nine years of experience in auction system design, testing, and operation in Europe with clients including GDF, E.ON, Endesa, Iberdrola, Electrabel, DONG Energy, and EDF. He has been involved in over 70 high-stakes auctions. He has worked for Power Auctions for four years. Prior to Power Auctions, he worked for over 9 years at IBM and PricewaterhouseCoopers as a management consultant in the energy and utilities sector. His management consulting experience includes systems analysis, design, implementation, testing, and business process redesign.

While working with high-stake auctions from 2001 until the present, Mr. Ashcroft has worked in numerous roles throughout the entire lifecycle of developing and implementing online auction platforms. He has been involved in the development of auction rules, the surrounding procedures, and related auction documentation. He has been responsible for all aspects of the technical development, from initial specifications development to the final software testing and operation. He has been a project technology lead, a user Accepting Testing Team lead as well as responsible for running auction training sessions and the auctions themselves.

Dr. Dinkin is Senior Auction Consultant at Power Auctions where he is responsible for helping to design and implement high-stakes auctions for a variety of governments and companies. Sam Dinkin did his Ph.D. thesis in combinatorial auctions under Vernon Smith. He started working with Power Auctions/MDI in 1996 as technical lead for implementation of Industry Canada’s original auction software for the LMDS auction. Since that time, he has designed, conducted and supported more than 50 auctions totaling over $100 billion in transactions. Most of these have been in regulated industries. His auction rules are the model for the world's four largest multi-unit electricity auctions. His auction management experience includes the New Jersey BGS Auction which is the largest annual multi-unit electricity auction in the world. He has built auctions for 10 Fortune 500 companies. He has helped national governments with their first multi-unit telecom auctions in seven countries and has assisted numerous bidding teams on six continents. He is a 7th plateau IBM master inventor who has won an achievement award for helping in the design of IBM's auction consulting offering.

Christina Aperjis is a Senior Auction Consultant at Power Auctions, where she works on auction design, the development of auction rules, and bidder advising. Dr. Aperjis advised the US Federal Communications Commission on the first-ever incentive auction of television broadcast spectrum, which repurposed broadcast spectrum for wireless broadband use. For the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Dr. Aperjis has designed, evaluated and simulated sophisticated auction environments for vaccine procurement. She has also advised the World Bank on the detailed design of an auction mechanism for procuring methane emission reductions to help mitigate climate change. Before joining Power Auctions, Dr. Aperjis was a research scientist at HP Labs, where she worked on market design and optimization.