Optimizing You
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.
Episodes
12 episodes
Dr. Evelyn Gong: Reinforcement Learning Algorithms for Business Problems
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 ma...
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Season 2
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Episode 6
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45:13
Dr. Mariana Escallon Barrios: Teaching, Scheduling Volunteers at Nonprofits, and Harvesting Operations at an Oil Palm Plantation
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 approa...
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Season 2
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Episode 5
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58:27
Dr. Woody Zhu: Generative Models for Public Policy Making
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...
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Season 2
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Episode 4
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58:55
Dr. Jourdain Lamperski - Linear Programming and Calibrating Model Parameters using Optimization
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 Ope...
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Season 2
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Episode 3
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1:09:21
Dr. Bryan Wilder - ML/Optimization: Decision Making in Social Settings
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 wi...
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Season 2
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Episode 2
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47:08
Dr. Michael Hamilton: Pricing Loot Boxes and Opaque Goods
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 stu...
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Season 2
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Episode 1
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50:02
Dr. Oliver Hinder: Gradient Descent for Solving Linear Programs
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 Mana...
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Season 1
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Episode 6
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40:36
Dr. Yash Puranik: Working at Aimpoint Digital / Research on BARON
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...
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Season 1
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Episode 5
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54:08
Dr. Destenie Nock: Impacts of COVID on Energy Consumption
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, sustainabili...
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Season 1
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Episode 4
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49:57
Chris Villi: Working at FedEx Ground / Shipping Problems
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 advancem...
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Season 1
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Episode 3
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1:15:52
Dr. Andrew Li: Active Sequential Hypothesis Testing
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 acad...
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Season 1
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Episode 2
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1:20:08
Dr. Ben Moseley: Learning Augmented Algorithms
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...
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Season 1
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Episode 1
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35:44