Skip to main content

Home

I am an Assistant Professor of Operations at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I earned my PhD in Operations Management from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.

My research examines how firms can make data-driven operational decisions under uncertainty, particularly in retail and online platforms. Specifically, I develop data-driven learning models under two complementary streams:

  1. Online learning models: I design reinforcement learning (bandit) algorithms for dynamic operational decisions such as optimizing personalized assortments with real-time demand learning.
  2. Offline learning models: I build novel customer choice frameworks to infer customer preferences and search behavior from historical data for improved pricing and assortment decisions.

You can find my CV here.

 

Publications

1. “A Dynamic Clustering Approach to Data-Driven Assortment Personalization“, with F. Bernstein and D. Sauré (2019). Management Science, 65(5), pp. 2095–2115.

  • First Prize, 2018 MSOM Student Paper Competition. 

2. “Learning in Combinatorial Optimization: What and How to Explore“, with D. Sauré and J. P. Vielma (2020). Operations Research, 68(5), pp. 1585–1604

  • Second Prize, 2013 INFORMS JFIG Paper Competition.

3. “Impact of Inventory Levels and Product Variety on Consumers’ Perceptions of Brands“, with S. Golara, and K. Rajavi (2024). Production and Operations Management, 33(9), pp. 1855–1874

4. “Diamonds in the Rough: Leveraging Click Data to Spotlight Underrated Products“, with S.M. Emadi and V. Deshpande. Production and Operations Management. Forthcoming.

  • Finalist, 2021 MSOM Data-Driven Challenge.

 

Papers under Review 

5. “Exploration Optimization for Dynamic Assortment Personalization under Linear Preferences“, with F. Bernstein and D. Sauré. Invited for a minor revision at Operations Research.

6. “A Feature-based Consideration Set Choice Model for Online Retailing“, with M.A. Farzaneh and A. Venkataraman. Under review after a minor revision at M&SOM.

 

Working papers 

7. “Information Traps for Consumer Learning in Assortment Planning”, with F. Del Solar and D. Sauré.

8. “Bundle Price Optimization with Learning”, with T. Abdallah and Amine Bennouna.

9. “Bias-Variance Trade-off in Reinforcement Learning: Why Simplicity Wins”, Single authored.

10. “Deep Reinforcement Learning in Service Systems”, with S.M. Emadi.