Hello! I'm Clayton Thomas. As of January 2026, I am an assistant professor in the department of computer science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI).
My research focuses on designing protocols that perform well in strategic environments.
One topic I like to explore is how these protocols should be explained to real people.
In more academic terms, I am a theorist studying mechanism and market design.
I've worked on a range of topics, including stable matchings, strategic simplicity, behavioral economics, communication complexity, transaction fee mechanisms, and combinatorial auctions.
Previously, I was a postdoc at Yale's CADMY (Fall 2025, working with Yang Cai), and at Microsoft Research (2023-2025, mentored by Nicole Immorlica).
Before that, I completed my PhD at Princeton, where I was very fortunate to be advised by Matt Weinberg.
During my PhD I was supported by a Wallace Memorial Fellowship in Engineering from Princeton, and a Siebel Scholar award.
Before that, I was an undergrad at Purdue University, where Elena Grigorescu got me started on my journey to becoming a theorist.
RPI Email: thomac13 (attempted spam prevention) (at)
(attempted spam prevention)
rpi.edu
Office: MRC 311
Personal Email: thomas.clay95 (attempted spam prevention) (at)
(attempted spam prevention)
gmail.com
Teaching
- Spring 2026: Designing Economic Algorithms. CSCI 4967 / 6967. Tuesdays and Fridays, 12:00-1:50pm, SAGE 2715.
Papers
[GHT]
Yannai A. Gonczarowski, Ori Heffetz, and Clayton Thomas.
Strategyproofness-Exposing Descriptions of Matching Mechanism.
Reject & Resubmit at the AER. Updated 2025.
[arXiv]
[NBER WP]
[35min talk].
A previous version, titled
Strategyproofness-Exposing Mechanism Descriptions, appeared in EC 2023.
[Previous version's arXiv]
[annotated abstract
poster]
[Online Experimental Materials]
[T]
Clayton Thomas.
Characterization of Priority-Neutral Matching Lattices.
FOCS 2025.
[paper]
[arXiv]
[STW]
Daniel Schoepflin, Clayton Thomas, and S. Matthew Weinberg.
Algorithmic and Structural Complexities of Menus in Unit-Demand Auctions.
WINE 2025.
[paper]
[GTW]
Aadityan Ganesh, Clayton Thomas, and S. Matthew Weinberg.
Characterizing Off-Chain Influence Proof Transaction Fee Mechanisms.
ITCS 2026.
[arXiv]
[GTW]
Aadityan Ganesh, Clayton Thomas, and S. Matthew Weinberg.
Revisiting the Primitives of Transaction Fee Mechanism Design.
EC 2024.
[arXiv]
[20min talk]
[Slides]
[GHIT]
Yannai A. Gonczarowski, Ori Heffetz, Guy Ishai, and Clayton Thomas.
Describing Deferred Acceptance and Strategyproofness to Participants: Experimental Analysis.
EC 2024.
[arXiv]
[20min talk]
[Poster]
[Full Screenshots Appendix]
[RTWZ]
Shiri Ron, Clayton Thomas, S. Matthew Weinberg, and Qianfan Zhang.
Communication Separations for Truthful Auctions: Breaking the Two-Player Barrier.
FOCS 2024.
[arXiv]
[GT]
Yannai A. Gonczarowski and Clayton Thomas.
Structural Complexities of Matching Mechanisms.
STOC 2024.
[arXiv]
[25min talk]
[CT]
Linda Cai and Clayton Thomas.
The Short-Side Advantage in Random Matching Markets.
SOSA 22.
[arXiv]
[2022 Slides]
[2019 Poster]
[RSTWZ]
Aviad Rubinstein, Raghuvansh R. Saxena, Clayton Thomas, S. Mathew
Weinberg, and Junyao Zhao.
Exponential Communication Separations between Notions of
Selfishness.
STOC 2021. [arXiv]
[20min talk]
[poster]
[T]
Clayton Thomas.
Classification of Priorities Such That Deferred Acceptance
is Obviously Strategyproof.
EC 2021. [arXiv]
[1min talk]
[20min talk]
[ABSTZ]
Itai Ashlagi, Mark Braverman, Amin Saberi, Clayton Thomas, and Geng Zhao.
Tiered Random Matching Markets: Rank is Proportional to
Popularity.
ITCS 2021. [arXiv]
[CTW]
Linda Cai, Clayton Thomas, and S. Matthew Weinberg.
Implementation in Advised Strategies:
Welfare Guarantees from Posted-Price Mechanisms when Demand Queries are
NP-hard.
ITCS 2020. [arXiv]
[CT]
Linda Cai and Clayton Thomas.
Representing All Stable Matchings by Walking a Maximal Chain.
Mimeo. [arXiv]
[GGTZ]
V. Gandikota, E. Grigorescu, C. Thomas, and M. Zhu.
Maximally recoverable codes: The bounded case.
In Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing, 2017.
[paper]
[slides]
Old Stuff
Fun Things
I made a few blog-style posts about climbing here.
Climbing is great.
Some very old projects or explainers:
["Fair Read-Write Locks", 2016.]
[Free Decision Trees, 2016.]
[A Haskell List Monad tutorial, 2015.]
[A Purdue math problem of the week, 2015.]
[How to plot a torus, 2014.]
[Rolling vs slipping wheels, 2014.]
[A counting problem about passwords, 2013.]
Course Projects
Paper Survey: Expansion in the Johnson Graph
With Uma Girish, 2019.
[report]
Paper Survey: New Lower Bound Techniques for the Query Complexity of
Truthful Mechanisms.
With Uma Girish.
For Matt Weinberg's "Open Problems in AGT" course, 2018.
[report]
You Can't Handle the Lie: Next-Hop Verification in BGP.
With Gavriel Hirsch.
For Jennifer Rexford's "Advanced Networking" course, 2019.
[report]
Verifying Structural Invariants of Programs.
With Jacob Bond.
For Roopsha Samanta's "Reasoning about Programs" course at Purdue, 2017.
[report]
[slides]
Old Teaching
I've always liked the following quote, from the first edition preface to Spivak's Calculus (some adjustments are my own).
Precision and rigor are neither deterrents to intuition,
nor the ends in themselves,
but the natural medium in which to formulate and think about
mathematical computer science questions.
Pre-professorship teaching experiences:
- Spring 2020: Preceptor for
COS 445 (Economics and Computing) at Princeton.
- Fall 2019: Preceptor for
COS 340 (Reasoning about Computation) at Princeton.
- Spring and Fall 2015: Recitation Teaching Assistant for CS 182
(Foundations of Computer Science) at Purdue.
I kept a small homepage with supplemental exercises I wrote.
