Biography

Dr. Yan joined ISE in the fall of 2020 as an assistant professor. He holds a PhD in Operations Research from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a BS in Industrial Engineering from Tsinghua University. Before joining UW, he was a postdoctoral researcher and a senior data scientist at Uber's marketplace group.

Education

• Ph.D. Operations Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2017
• B.S. Industrial Engineering, Tsinghua University, 2012

Research Statement

Dr. Yan's research centers around transportation and logistics systems, with a recent focus on emerging problems in sharing economy and online platforms. He also has a particular interest in air transportation systems. His work aims to study fundamental properties of these problems and propose (data-driven) practical solutions for implementation. When analyzing these problems, he is broadly interested in tools from optimization, game theory, stochastic modeling and statistics.

Dr. Yan is a recipient of the Best Dissertation Award Honorable Mention and the Outstanding Paper Award in Air Transportation from INFORMS Transportation Science and Logistics Society, the Best Dissertation Award from INFORMS Aviation Application Section, and the AGIFORS Anna Valicek Award of Airline Operations Research, among others.

Before joining UW, he was a postdoctoral researcher and a senior data scientist at Uber's marketplace group where he designed rider surge pricing algorithm which balances demand and supply in real-time.

Select publications

1. Yan, C., Barnhart, C. and Vaze, V., Choice-Based Airline Schedule Design and Fleet Assignment: A Decomposition Approach, Transportation Science.
2. Castro, F., Nazerzadeh, H. and Yan, C., Matching Queues with Reneging: A Product Form Solution, Queueing Systems, 2020.
3. Yan, C., Zhu, H., Korolko, N. and Woodard, D., Dynamic Pricing and Matching in Ride-Hailing Platforms, Naval Research Logistics, 2019.
4. Yan, C., Swaroop, P., Ball, M.O., Barnhart, C. and Vaze, V., Majority Judgment over a Convex Candidate Space, Operations Research Letters, 47(4): 317-325, 2019.
5. Yan, C., Vaze, V. and Barnhart, C., Airline-Driven Ground Delay Programs: A Benefits Assessment, Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, 89: 268-288, 2018.
6. Yan, C. and Kung, J., Robust Aircraft Routing, Transportation Science, 52(1): 118-133, 2018.
7. Yan, C., Vaze, V., Vanderboll, A. and Barnhart, C., Tarmac Delay Policies: A Passenger-Centric Analysis, Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 83: 42-62, 2016.
8. Yan, C., Jiang, H. and Xie, S., Capacity optimization of an isolated intersection under the phase swap sorting strategy, Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, 60: 85-106, 2014.

Honors & awards

• Harold W. Kuhn Award, 2021
• Finalist, POMS-JD.com Best Data-Driven Research Paper Competition, 2019
• Honorable Mention (Second Place), Best Dissertation Award, Transportation Science and Logistics Society, INFORMS, 2018
• First Place, Best Dissertation Award, Aviation Application Section, INFORMS, 2018
• Outstanding Paper in Air Transportation, Transportation Science and Logistics Society, INFORMS, 2017
• UPS Doctoral Fellowship, Center of Transportation and Logistics, MIT, 2016
• First Place, Anna Valicek Award, AGIFORS, 2015
• First Place, Railway Application Section Problem Solving Competition, INFORMS, 2012
• Robert E. Thurber Fellowship, MIT, 2012

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