Send us a text Evelyn Xiao-Yue Gong is an Assistant Professor of OM at Tepper. She has a PhD from the ORC at MIT, where she was advised by David Simchi-Levi and Jim Orlin. She spent summers at Google Research, Microsoft, HelloFresh, and DE Shaw. Her main research pertains to AI for supply chain and sustainability. She also works on assortment optimization and data-driven decision making. In the first half of the episode, we discuss her journey from being a PhD student to an assistant profess...
All content for Optimizing You is the property of Anthony Karahalios and is served directly from their servers
with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
Send us a text Evelyn Xiao-Yue Gong is an Assistant Professor of OM at Tepper. She has a PhD from the ORC at MIT, where she was advised by David Simchi-Levi and Jim Orlin. She spent summers at Google Research, Microsoft, HelloFresh, and DE Shaw. Her main research pertains to AI for supply chain and sustainability. She also works on assortment optimization and data-driven decision making. In the first half of the episode, we discuss her journey from being a PhD student to an assistant profess...
Send us a text Evelyn Xiao-Yue Gong is an Assistant Professor of OM at Tepper. She has a PhD from the ORC at MIT, where she was advised by David Simchi-Levi and Jim Orlin. She spent summers at Google Research, Microsoft, HelloFresh, and DE Shaw. Her main research pertains to AI for supply chain and sustainability. She also works on assortment optimization and data-driven decision making. In the first half of the episode, we discuss her journey from being a PhD student to an assistant profess...
Send us a text Mariana Escallon Barrios is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Information Systems at CMU in our Heinz College. She earned her PhD in IEMS from Northwestern where she was advised by Karen Smilowitz. She worked on modeling and solution approaches to logistics problems in nonprofit settings. She is an active member of INFORMS and WORMS. We discuss her decision to become a teaching professor at CMU, her research on scheduling volunteers at a nonprofit, her research on harvesting ...
Send us a text Woody (Shixiang) Zhu is an Assistant Professor of data analytics at Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy. He received his PhD in Machine Learning at Georgia Tech in ISyE. He develops models for spatio-temporal data and dynamic networks, and decision making under uncertainty. He was a finalist for the 2021 INFORMS Wagner prize and won second place in the 2019 INFORMS Doing Good with Good OR. First 1/2: We discuss Woody's decision to pursue a PhD in ML at Georg...
Send us a text Jourdain Bernard Lamperski is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. He received a B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Pittsburgh, and a PhD in Operations Research from the Operations Research Center at MIT where he was advised by Robert M. Freund. His research interests include optimization, machine learning, and healthcare. We discuss Jourdain's career: - Why did he choose to go to MIT ORC? - How did he choo...
Send us a text Bryan Wilder is an Assistant Professor in the Machine Learning Department at CMU. He received a B.S. in computer science at University of Central Florida, and then started a PhD in computer science at the University of Southern California with advisor Milind Tambe, and then they transferred over to Harvard together. His research focuses on AI for equitable data-driven decision making in high-stakes social settings, and integrating methods from machine learning, optimization, an...
Send us a text Michael Hamilton is an Assistant Professor of Business Analytics and Operations at the University of Pittsburgh’s Katz School of Business. He received his PhD in 2019 in OR from Columbia University advised by Adam Elmachtoub. Before that he studied math at Rutgers. He studies pricing, prescriptive analytics, and market design. We discuss how Michael decided to study OR, reasons why he enjoys his position as a professor, his research on pricing with Loot boxes and Opaque goods,...
Send us a text Oliver Hinder is an Assistant Professor in Industrial Engineering Department at University of Pittsburgh. Before that he was a visiting post-doc at Google in the Optimization and Algorithms group in New York and received his PhD in 2019 in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford working with professor Yinyu Ye. He studies local optimization, gradient descent, both convex and nonconvex problems, etc. We chat about Oliver moving to the U.S. from New Zealand to start his...
Send us a text Yash graduated in 2016 from a PhD program in Chemical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University where he was advised by Dr. Nick Sahinidis . He now works as a Senior Data Scientist as Aimpoint Digital. We discuss Yash's experience as a PhD student, some of his research on BARON, his transition to a full-time job, and his current role at Aimpoint. Yash also has some great life advice for PhD students. Check it out!
Send us a text Dr. Nock is an Assistant Professor of Engineering & Public Policy and Civil & Environmental Engineering at CMU. She received her PhD in IEOR in 2019 from UMass Amherst, and she does a lot of cool research on energy systems, sustainability, and equity. We talk about building a strong advisor-student relationship where Dr. Nock advises students to over-communicate, set SMART goals, and pursue passions outside of work. Dr. Nock gives some great advice for working as a PhD...
Send us a text Chris Villi has worked at FedEx Ground over the past 21 years. Chris currently holds the role of Operations Research Principal - providing technical leadership surrounding coordination of OR efforts, investment in OR professionals, and advancement of OR. We chat about Chris' background, difficulties around solving problems in practice versus theoretically, and a current OR project that Chris is working on to optimize some of the shipping done by FedEx Ground. Enjoy!
Send us a text Dr. Andrew Li is an Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. In this episode, we start by chatting about his background. We discuss his decision to enter a PhD program in Operations Research, experience and thoughts on the academic job market, and some advice for current students. We delve into his transition from student to advisor, and discuss the responsibility of an advisor to provide interesting projects to students. From here, we also discuss the soft skills o...
Send us a text Dr. Ben Moseley - professor at CMU - discusses his research and his work with Relational AI. His research includes learning-augmented algorithms, which combines machine learning based predictions with algorithms for common problems like maximum matchings. He also works on scheduling related problems. Dr. Moseley gives some insights into why he enjoys being a professor in Operations Research, and how he enjoys working on theoretical problems with practical applications. We also ...
Send us a text Evelyn Xiao-Yue Gong is an Assistant Professor of OM at Tepper. She has a PhD from the ORC at MIT, where she was advised by David Simchi-Levi and Jim Orlin. She spent summers at Google Research, Microsoft, HelloFresh, and DE Shaw. Her main research pertains to AI for supply chain and sustainability. She also works on assortment optimization and data-driven decision making. In the first half of the episode, we discuss her journey from being a PhD student to an assistant profess...
