Optimizing You

Apr 08 2024 12 ep. 55 mins 7
Optimizing You Podcast artwork

We discuss all things optimization. Through interviewing professors and practitioners in fields like Operations Research and Industrial Engineering, we show a variety of perspectives on what it is like to study optimization, what it's like to get a PhD in a field related to optimization, and why it's important to study optimization.

  Education  Technology  Science
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Dr. Evelyn Gong: Reinforcement Learning Algorithms for Business Problems

Apr 08 2024 45 mins  
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 fi

Dr. Mariana Escallon Barrios: Teaching, Scheduling Volunteers at Nonprofits, and Harvesting Operations at an Oil Palm Plantation

Feb 29 2024 58 mins  
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 pro

Dr. Woody Zhu: Generative Models for Public Policy Making

Jul 23 2023 58 mins  
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 INFOR

Dr. Jourdain Lamperski - Linear Programming and Calibrating Model Parameters using Optimization

May 06 2023 69 mins  
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

Dr. Bryan Wilder - ML/Optimization: Decision Making in Social Settings

Apr 01 2023 47 mins  
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 maki

Dr. Michael Hamilton: Pricing Loot Boxes and Opaque Goods

Jan 24 2023 50 mins  
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 wh

Dr. Oliver Hinder: Gradient Descent for Solving Linear Programs

Jun 18 2022 40 mins  
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 a

Dr. Yash Puranik: Working at Aimpoint Digital / Research on BARON

Jun 01 2022 54 mins  
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 advi

Dr. Destenie Nock: Impacts of COVID on Energy Consumption

Mar 03 2022 49 mins  
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 g

Chris Villi: Working at FedEx Ground / Shipping Problems

Feb 14 2022 75 mins  
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 t