History

In 2016, Rediet Abebe and Kira Goldner started a small reading group to discuss social applications of mechanism design—a mathematical research field that analyzes how to design systems for participants who have private information and may act strategically in their self-interest. Popular examples of mechanism design include designing the rules of auctions and designing how students get matched to schools. Rediet and Kira called their group Mechanism Design for Social Good (MD4SG). Irene Lo and Ana-Andreea Stoica joined the organizing team and the group expanded quickly: by 2018, MD4SG included five more reading groups on a range of topics including healthcare, environment and climate, and online labor markets, 

MD4SG hosted their first workshop in 2017 in conjunction with the Economics and Computation conference (EC). The workshop included papers and invited talks that use mechanism design in a range of applications, including affordable housing, education, and health insurance. MD4SG held three more workshops in conjunction with EC and also ran tutorials in conjunction with the conferences COMPASS, FAccT, and WINE.  

The workshops evolved into the ACM Conference on Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms and Optimization (EAAMO), the first of which was held online in 2021. The EAAMO conference provided a venue to publish the type of multidisciplinary research that often emerged from the MD4SG working groups. The first in-person EAAMO conference was held in 2022 at George Mason University, just outside Washington D.C. 

In 2024, the activities of MD4SG and the EAAMO conference were combined under the EAAMO banner. By this time, the scope of MD4SG had grown far beyond the initial reading group and the name EAAMO was a more accurate reflection of the community's activities. To recognise the core role that the MD4SG working groups played to bridge research and practice, the working groups became EAAMO Bridges.