Research Team

Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.

Helen Keller


The team! The team! The team! (August 2022)

PhD students
Wanping Dong

Wanping Dong is a first-year PhD student in Industrial, Operations, and Engineering at the University of Michigan. Before that, she received her undergraduate degree in the School of Mathematical Sciences at Peking University. Her research interest is designing and analyzing algorithms for solving optimization problems related to machine learning.

Jiahao Shi

Jiahao Shi is an incoming PhD student (Fall 2021) in the department of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan. Before joining IOE, he received the bachelor’s degree in the school of Mathematics at the Shandong University and the master’s degree in the department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics at the Johns Hopkins University. He is interested in stochastic optimization, derivative-free optimization, and machine learning. His research is motivated by solving real-world optimization problems. He is currently working on constrained stochastic optimization. (website)


Master’s students
Tunan Wang

Tunan Wang is a 2nd-year Master’s student majoring in Applied Statistics at the University of Michigan. He is interested in developing optimization methods that can be applied to real-world problems. And currently, he is focusing on distributed optimization problems.

Chengyue Zhang

Chengyue Zhang is a Master’s student in IOE at the University of Michigan. She was an undergraduate student in the University of Michigan-Shanghai Jiaotong University Dual Degree program. She majored in Industrial and Operations Engineering and Mechanical Engineering. She is interested in optimization algorithms and application of optimization methods in real-life problems.


Undergraduate students
  • Oluwakemi Johnson (IOE)
  • Congyan Song (Honor Mathematics & Data Science & Statistics)
  • Zhiyuan Sun (Mathematics and Computer Science)

Former Students (chronological order)

  • Zihong Yi (2020-2023): University of Michigan (Undergraduate)
    • First position: PhD in Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Optimization, Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University
  • Xiaoyi Qu (2020-2022): University of Michigan (Undergraduate)
    • First position: PhD in Industrial and Systems Engineering, Lehigh University
  • Virginia Artigot (2022): University of Michigan (Undergraduate)
    • First position: Masters in Industrial Engineering, Universidad Pontificia Comillas
  • Samir Agarwala (2021): University of Michigan (Undergraduate)
    • First position: Masters in Computer Science, Stanford University
  • Kai Liu (2020-2021): University of Michigan (Master’s)
  • Jiannan Xu (2020-2021): University of Michigan (Master’s)
    • First position: PhD in Operations Management/Management Science, University of Maryland
  • Majid Jahai (2018-2021): Lehigh University (PhD)
    • First position: Senior AI Scientist, Target
  • Liyuan Cao (2018-2020): Lehigh University (PhD)
    • First position: Postdoctoral Researcher, Beijing International Center for Mathematical Research, Peking University
  • Oumaima Sohab (2018-2020): Lehigh University (PhD)
  • Ved Patel (2018-2020): Lehigh University (Master’s)
    • First position: Data Scientist, Coupa Software
  • Sudeep Metha (2018-2020): Lehigh University (Master’s)
    • First position: Data Scientist, CVS Health
  • Sergey Rusakov (2018-2019): Lehigh University (PhD)
  • Zheng Shi (2018-2019): Lehigh University (PhD)
    • First position: Data Scientist, IBM