Group

Current Graduate Students

  • Yuhao Wang (Ph.D. in progress)
    • Ed Iacobucci PhD Student Fellowship for Research Excellence in the area of Applied Probability and Simulation, 2024
    • Best Paper Award Theoretical Track – Runner-up, 18th Data Mining & Decision Analytics Workshop, 2023
    • INFORMS Poster Competition – Finalist, 2023
    • Best Theoretical Paper – Winner, Winter Simulation Conference, 2022
  • Xiaoshuang Wang (Ph.D. in progress)

Alumni

  • Yifan Lin (Ph.D. , graduated in 2024)
    • Thesis title: Data-driven Stochastic Optimization in the Presence of Distributional Uncertainty
    • First job: Senior Research Scientist at C3 AI
  • Sait Cakmak (Ph.D., graduated in 2022)
    • Thesis title: Simulation Optimization in the Presence of Environmental Variables
    • First job: Research Scientist at Meta
  • Tianyi Liu (Ph.D., graduated in 2021)
    • Thesis Title: Theoretical Analysis of Stochastic Gradient Descent in Stochastic Optimization
    • Awards: ARC-TRIAD Fellowship, spring 2019; WSC Best Student Paper Award, 2020
    • First job: Research Scientist at ByteDance
  • Di Wu (Ph.D., graduated in 2019)
    • Thesis title: Simulation optimization under input uncertainty: formulations, algorithms, and insights
    • Awards: CSC Scholarship, 2014-2018; ARC Fellowship, Spring 2017; Outstanding Simulation Publication Award, 2020
    • First job: Applied Scientist at Amazon
  • Joshua Hale (Ph.D., graduated in 2017)
    • Thesis title: An investigation of model-based approaches in solving a variety of global optimization problems
    • Awards: NSF Graduate Fellowship, 2012-2015; finalist for the Best Paper accepted/published in Journal of Global Optimization, 2016
    • First job: Data Scientist at Intel
  • Helin Zhu (Ph.D., graduated in 2016)
    • Thesis title: Risk-sensitive stochastic control and simulation optimization
    • Award: Outstanding Simulation Publication Award, 2020
    • First job: Data Scientist at Uber
  • Chang-Han Rhee (postdoctoral fellow, 2013-2015)
    • Co-advised with Dr. Peng Qiu
    • Now Assistant Professor at Northwestern University
  • Fan Ye (Ph.D., graduated in 2015)
    • Thesis title: Information relaxation in stochastic optimal control
    • Award: Mavis Future Faculty Fellow, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2013
    • First job: Quantitative Researcher at Morgan Stanley
  • Xi Chen (Ph.D., graduated in 2014)
    • Thesis title: New model-based methods for non-differentiable and simulation optimization
    • Awards: 2013 CUMW award from INFORMS Simulation Society; finalist of the Best Student Paper Award at 2013 Winter Simulation Conference
    • First job: Data Scientist at Apple
  • Jingyuan Wan (M.S. in OR, graduated in 2020)
  • Yuxuan Ren (M.S. in OR, graduated in 2020)
  • Shen Yan (M.S. with thesis, graduated in 2011)

Visiting Students

  • Xinyue Gu (Visiting student, September 2018 – March 2019)
  • Maxence Dehestru (Visiting student, June-September 2015)
  • Louis Barre (Visiting student, April-September 2014)
  • Tingxu Wang (Hourly research assistant, June-August 2013)
  • Romain Florentz (Visiting student, April-September 2011, co-advised with Liming Feng)