Our research focuses on modeling complex (and often stochastic) search and optimization problems and solving them via computational heuristics. A special emphasis is given to distributed problems arising in social multi-agent systems, which cannot be optimized by pure economic price coordination.  Imposing a solution by a central planner will often be rejected by the autonomous agents. We therefore need to design distributed mechanisms providing incentives to participate to the individual agents without deviating too much from a pareto-efficient solution.