I used the tools of operations research (optimization, stochastic modeling, and game theory), machine learning, and statistics to study problems in operations management broadly defined, including supply chains, service systems, transportation and mobility, and markets. My current research focus is on sustainable operations and innovative business models, including sharing economy, on-demand services, and online marketplaces.
Yan Chen’s research interests are in behavioral and experimental economics, market and mechanism design. She conducts large-scale randomized field experiments on gig economy platforms to test the efficacy of team formation algorithms on gig worker productivity and retention. She also conducts experiments in online communities to evaluate what increases pro-social behavior. Her experiments are informed by economic theory and causal inference techniques.
I am a research faculty at the Computer Science and Engineering department at University of Michigan. I work with a group of talented PhD students on computer architecture, compiler techniques, and software engineering. My group focuses on developing novel software and hardware solutions to optimize large-scale data intensive worklods (e.g., graph traversals).
I earned my PhD degree in CSE from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA, master’s degree in EE from Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel, and an undergraduate degree in EEE from BITS Pilani, Goa Campus, Goa, India.
I am interested in principled approaches to machine learning with focus on data-driven decision making, deep learning foundations, and heterogeneous data. My research integrates optimization methods (specifically convex and first-order) and statistical learning theory to design efficient algorithms/architectures that address these data-science problems.
How did you end up where you are today?
I obtained my PhD degree from Caltech in 2015 where I received a Charles Wilts Prize for the best departmental thesis. During postdoc, I was at UC Berkeley as a Simons Fellow. After spending few years in industry, I joined UC Riverside where I received NSF CAREER and Google Research Scholar Awards. Starting Fall 2023, I will be joining EECS department at U-M.
An interesting fact: The elegance of mathematics has always amazed me and led me to participate in International Math Olympiad.
Also, my Erdos number is 3!
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