Oscar Cofounder Awarded 2019 Seoul Test of Time Award
The International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2) announced that the 2019 Seoul Test of Time Award will be presented to the authors of the paper “The EigenTrust Algorithm for Reputation Management in P2P Networks”; Mario Schlosser ( Co-founder and CEO, Oscar Health ), Sepandar D. Kamvar (Founder, Mosaic Building Group Inc and Celo), and Héctor Garcia-Molina (Professor, Stanford University). The award will be presented during the opening ceremony of the 28th International conference in the Web Conference series on May 15, in San Francisco.
The paper was first presented at the 12th International World Wide Web Conference in Budapest, Hungary in May 2003. It has gone on to have more than 4,685 citations to date and has become foundational research on a wide range of issues that are defining the evolution of the Web – from trust in social networks, to crypto networks.
This paper introduces a reputation system called EigenTrust to determine how trustworthy a peer is in a distributed system. It was originally proposed as an algorithm to decrease the number of downloads of inauthentic files in a peer-to-peer file-sharing network by assigning each peer a unique global trust value. The relevance of the EigenTrust algorithm, however, extends to many other types of distributed systems as well, such as today’s social media networks, where peers contribute content that may be malicious or “fake” in nature. The algorithm computes global trust values for each peer that reflect the experiences of all peers in the network with the given peer. All peers in the network participate in computing these values in a distributed and node-symmetric manner. Through EigenTrust, the network effectively identifies malicious peers and isolates them from other peers.
Dame Wendy Hall, Chair of the International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2), said: “Since 2003 when this paper was first published, the growth of social media usage worldwide, together with the ‘Fake News’ phenomenon, has reinforced the importance of this paper in today’s society, and will no doubt continue to exert its influence in years to come.”
The EigenTrust Algorithm is the perfect example of the overarching theme of this year’s Web Conference: a Web for Good. The conference, which takes place May 13-17 will provide a forum for more than 1,500 industry professionals, researchers, policy makers, developers, and other practitioners to reflect on, discuss and debate the evolution of the Web, and its impact on society and culture while identifying future opportunities and research directions that can help us create a Web that is open, safe, inclusive, and balanced.
About the Seoul Test of Time Award
Inaugurated in 2014, the Seoul Test of Time Award is made possible by the generous contribution of the organisers of WWW2014 held in Seoul, South Korea, in May 2014. It is awarded annually to the author or authors of a paper presented at a previous World Wide Web conference that has, as the name suggests, stood the test of time.
The first Award, presented at WWW2015 in Florence, was made to Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, for their world-changing paper ‘The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine’, presented at the World Wide Web Conference in Brisbane in 1998. Notes to Editors
- This news release is issued on behalf of the IW3C2 (the International World Wide Web Conference Committee). For further information contact: contact@iw3c2.org
- The International World-Wide Web Conference Committee is the Association that organises global academic conferences on Web technology: http://www.iw3c2.org/conferences
About The Web Conference
Since its first event, in 1994 at CERN, the Web Conference (formerly the WWW Conference) has provided scientists, researchers, policy makers, activists and technology industry leaders with the forum to discuss the evolution of Web and its impact on business, culture and society. The conference is organized each year by a local team of volunteers in different parts of the world in collaboration with the International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2). This year’s conference is organized by Web4Good, a non-profit organization with 501(c)(3) status and sponsored by Microsoft (Diamond); Amazon, Bloomberg and Google (Gold); Criteo AI Lab, Cisco, NTENT, Spotify, Yahoo Research and Wikimedia Foundation (Silver); and Baidu, DiDi, eBay, Facebook, LinkedIn, Megagon Labs, Mix, Mozilla, Netflix Research, Northeastern University, Pinterest, Quora, Visa Research and Walmart Labs (Bronze). For more information on The Web Conference 2019, visit https://www2019.thewebconf.org/. For updates on future events, visit: https://www.iw3c2.org/
About Oscar
Oscar is a technology-driven, consumer-focused health insurance startup founded in 2012 and headquartered in New York City. Oscar makes health care easy. Oscar uses technology and personalized service to give members transparency into the health care system and empower them to choose quality, affordable care. The Oscar member experience includes a personalized concierge team that helps members do everything from finding a doctor to processing a claim, a 24/7 Doctor on Call service for members on the go, and a tightly integrated, curated network of first-rate physicians and hospitals. Members can easily access their health history and account information via hioscar.com and our iOS and Android apps. Say hi or learn more at https://hioscar.com or follow us at https://twitter.com/OscarHealth.
