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Research Papers

1. Assortment Optimization Under History-Dependent Utility (PDF)
   with Taotao He and Huan Zheng
   Accepted at Operations Research subject to a voluntary code and data review

   • Existing assortment models often assume static consumer preferences, overlooking dynamic, history-dependent choices prevalent in multi-period retailing, especially in dining industry.
   • Build a multi-period assortment model with cross-period history-dependent effects and cross-product substitution effects, leading to a softmax-of-exponential nonconvex structure
   • Propose a lifting-based reformulation framework for the nonconvexity, improving 10.4% revenue
2. Strong Formulations for Logit-Based Multi-Purchase Behavior and Applications
   with Taotao He and Zhongqi Wu
   Soon submitted to Operations Research

   • Consumer's multi-purchase behavior could be a mixture of intra-category and cross-category patterns, moving beyond the category assumption in traditional models.
   • Propose a hypergraph representation for general multi-purchase behavior, unifying several models. Linearize the hypergraph structure via techniques in multilinear optimization and combine convexification techniques in fractional programming to derive strong formulations
3. Joint Ranking and Assortment Optimization under Order-Dependent Choice Model
   with Taotao He and Huan Zheng
   Work in progress

   • Propose a framework to analyze two strategic decisions in offline multi-store retailing and capture their interactions on demand via an order-dependent choice model
   • Develop a scalable model using only ranking binaries and unifying existing single-store results
4. Network Revenue Management Under Regime Switching Demand
   with Ningyuan Chen and Huan Zheng
   Work in progress
5. Revisiting Random Utility Model under a Multilinear Optimization Lens
   with Taotao He and Huan Zheng
   Work in progress
6. Data-Driven and People-Centric Operations: Research Opportunities in Retail Operations
   with Yuanzheng Ma and Huan Zheng
   Published at Fundamental Research, 2025

Industry Projects

1. SmartCater: Intelligent Menu Planning
   Sovell Co., with Prof. Ying Rong and Prof. Huan Zheng

   • Analyzed consumer choices using cafeteria transaction data, and investigated the multi-period menu planning problem considering consumer satiation behavior and operational constraints. Developed a randomized policy for industry implementation. Motivated a history-dependent choice model presented in a manuscript currently under review at Operations Research.
2. Decoding Demand: The Impact of Product Line Tiers
   Jianzhijia Pharmacy, with Prof. Huan Zheng

   • Analyze consumer choice using multi-store transaction and product line data. Estimate how product line tiers affect demand and provide insights for assortment and product line design. Motivate an order-dependent choice model in a joint optimization framework presented in a working paper.

Teaching

1. Modeling and Optimization
   Fall 2020, 2021, 2022

   • Topic: data analytics, modeling, and optimization tools for business decision-making
   • Designed assignments, the final project, and a lecture on column generation. Delivered a lecture on Python programming and Gurobi implementation.
2. Optimization Methods for Economics
   Spring 2021

   • Topic: fundamental optimization models and tools motivated by economic applications
   • Evaluated assignments and provided support for Julia coding tasks

Conference Presentations

Strong Formulations for Logit-Based Multi-Purchase Behavior
• INFORMS Annual Meeting, Atlanta, Oct. 2025

Assortment Optimization Under History-Dependent Utility
• The POMS International Conference in China, Jul. 2025
• The 15th POMS-HK International Conference, Jan. 2025
• INFORMS Revenue Management and Pricing (RMP) Section Conference, Jul. 2024
• INFORMS Annual Meeting, Arizona, Oct. 2023
• The 15th International Annual Conference of the Chinese Scholars Association for Management Science and Engineering (CSAMSE), Jul. 2023

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