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.
Optimizing You
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 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 professor.
In the second half of the episode, we discuss her research on reinforcement algorithms, and some recent work on using these algorithms to solve a problem for packaging at HelloFresh.
Enjoy!