Faculty

PhD, MS, University of Southern California; MTech, IIT- Madras; BEng, Anna University

Arif Ansari is an expert in the area of data mining, business intelligence, data warehousing, and intelligent systems and technologies, a field in which he has fifteen years of research experience. He has published in IEEE Transactions on Systems and Man and Cybernetics. Professor Ansari received Marshall's Golden Apple Award in 2006.

PhD, Carnegie Mellon University; BA, BS, The Hebrew University

Yehuda Bassok's research interests include supply chain management, design and analysis of purchasing contracts, management of centralized and decentralized inventory systems, and bargaining within supply chains. His research has been published in many top journals, including Management Science and Operations Research. Prior to joining USC, he was on the faculty of Northwestern University and a visiting professor at the University of Washington. Professor Bassok served as chief system analyst of SES, a company that specialized in developing real time data collection and scheduling systems. Professor Bassok has received several teaching awards, including Marshall's Golden Apple Award in 2003.

PhD, UCLA; MS, BS, Bilkent University

Murat Bayiz is an Associate Professor of Clinical Data Sciences and Operations at Marshall School of Business. He has two decades of combined management consulting and academic experience and specializes in operations strategy, project and supply chain management.

Murat teaches courses in supply chain management, project management, and operations management, operations consulting at Marshall School’s undergraduate, MS in GSCM, and MBA programs. In recent years he received two Golden Apple awards for teaching excellence and the Evan Thompson award for teaching and learning innovation.

Prior to joining USC, Murat was a management consultant and senior researcher at PRTM Management Consultants (later acquired by PwC) and consulted with high tech companies on supply chain strategy projects. While he was at PRTM, he earned the prestigious Move the Needle award given to consultants for projects with the most significant client impacts. Previously, he was a consultant at Kiran Analytics and developed optimization and simulation models for Fortune 500 companies.

Murat earned his Ph.D. in Operations Management from the Anderson School of Management at UCLA. He received his Bachelor of Science (graduated as valedictorian) and his Master of Science in Industrial Engineering from Bilkent University. Murat completed the Certified in Production and Inventory Management (CPIM) program by APICS.

PhD, Statistics, Stanford (advisor: Robert Tibshirani); BS, Physics, Stanford

Jacob Bien's research focuses on statistical machine learning and in particular the development of novel methods that balance flexibility and interpretability for analyzing complex data. He combines ideas from convex optimization and statistics to develop methods that are of direct use to scientists and others with large datasets. His work has been supported by an NSF CAREER award and a three-year NSF grant on high-dimensional covariance estimation. He serves as an associate editor of Biometrika and Biostatistics. Before joining USC, he was an assistant professor at Cornell.

Feng Chen is an operations management scholar. Her research interests include process analysis, supply chain management and supply chain analytics, and experimental study of behavioral impact on operations decision making. She teaches courses of operations management and data analysis for decision making. Feng received her Ph.D. in business administration from University of Southern California.

Annie's research interest is in large-scale discrete optimization methods, including mixed integer programming heuristics, approximate dynamic programming, and simulation-based optimization. Her research focuses on applications in online-retail inventory management, which draws from her work experience at Amazon.com and Walmart eCommerce. Prior to joining Marshall, Annie completed her PhD in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, where she also served as a teaching assistant in Introduction to Operations Management, Nonlinear Programming, and Design and Analysis of Algorithms.

PhD, MIT; MBA, Indian Institute of Management - Calcutta; BTech, Indian Institute of Technology - Bombay

Sriram Dasu's research has been published Queuing Systems, Operations Research, and Management Science. He has served as associate editor of Management Science and senior editor of Manufacturing and Service Operations. His research interest are healthcare operations, global health, service operations with focus on customer psychology, and supply chain management.

Ph.D., MIT

Kimon Drakopoulos is an Assistant Professor in the Data Sciences and Operations department at USC
Marshall School of Business. His research focuses on the operations of complex networked systems,
social networks, stochastic modeling, game theory and information economics.
Kimon, prior to joining USC, completed his PhD at the Laboratory for Information and Decision systems at MIT focusing on the analysis and control of contagion processes on networks.

PhD, Stanford University; MBA, American University in Cairo; BS, Cairo University

Omar El Sawy's expertise is in digital business strategy in dynamic environments and business models for digital platforms. He served as Director of Research for Marshall's Institute for Communications Technology Management from 2001-2007. He is the author of over 100 papers and a seven-time winner of the Society for Information Management's Annual Academic Paper Award - most recently in 2015. He is currently Senior Editor of MIS Quarterly and on several editorial boards. He teaches in the MBA program and received the Marshall School's Evan C. Thompson Award for Teaching and Learning Innovation in 2012. He served as advisor to the United Nations Development Programme in Egypt, and as a Fulbright scholar in Finland. In 2008, he was inducted as the 45th Fellow of the Association of Information Systems for his research contributions.

PhD, MS, Princeton University; BS, University of Science and Technology of China

Yingying Fan's research interests include high dimensional statistical inference, classification and variable selection, nonparametric statistics, and financial econometrics. Her papers have been published in journals including the Annals of Statistics, Journal of the American Statistical Association, Journal of Econometrics, and Journal of Financial Econometrics. She was Lecturer in the Department of Statistics at Harvard University from 2007-2008. She is the recipient of National Science Foundation Grant (2009-2012, PI), 2010 Zumberge Individual Award from USC's James H. Zumberge Faculty Research and Innovation Fund (2010-2011, PI), and 2010 Dean's Award for Research Excellence. She also serves in the membership committee of the International Chinese Statistical Association (2009-Present).

PhD, University of Michigan; MA, SUNY-Buffalo; BA, BS, Haifa University

Mendel Fygenson's research has been published in MIS Quarterly, Trends in Mathematics, and the Journal of the American Statistical Association. He received Marshall's Golden Apple Award for teaching, as well as the Professor of the year award from Gamma Sigma Alpha, and has consulted for a variety of organizations, including Millennium, Inc., Bristol-Meyers/Squibb, Pre-Clinical Group, and Nitinol Medical Technologies.

PhD, Utah State University; MS, BS, Vilnius University

Robertas Gabrys has research interest in functional data analysis and its applications in environmental sciences, financial econometrics, and space physics; statistical computing, and actuarial mathematics. His work has been published in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Journal of the American Statistical Association, and Austrian Journal of Statistics.

PhD, MIT; BA, Yale University

Vishal Gupta is an Assistant Professor in Data Sciences and Operations. Vishal completed his PhD in Operations Research from MIT, focusing on data-driven methods in optimization. He earned his BA in Mathematics and Philosophy from Yale University, graduating Magna Cum Laude with honors, and completed Part III of the Mathematics Tripos at the University of Cambridge with distinction as part of the Paul Mellon Graduate Fellowship.
In addition, Vishal spent 4 years working in Quantitative Analytics for Barclays Capital with particular emphasis in commodities modeling, derivatives pricing and risk management. He continues to collaborate with industrial partners in electricity markets and financial service providers.
Vishal's research interests focus on developing novel techniques for representing uncertainty and behavior in optimization problems. He draws heavily on state-of-the-art statistical techniques for large data sets.

PhD, Stanford University; BSc, BCom, University of Auckland

Gareth James is an expert on statistical methodology in the areas of functional data analysis and high dimensional statistics, with particular application to marketing problems. He has published extensively and is a co-author of one of the leading books on statistical learning methods. He teaches both MBA and PhD courses ranging from introductory statistics through to advanced modern non-linear regression techniques. Professor James has won several research and teaching awards, including two Deans awards for Research Excellence and two Golden Apple awards for his MBA courses. Dr. James has also served as the PI or Co-PI on several NSF research grants and as an Associate Editor for journals such as JASA, and Statistica Sinca. He is an elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association and a life member of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.

PhD Stanford University; B.Sc Sharif University of Technology

Adel Javanmard is an assistant professor in the department of Data Sciences and Operation, at USC Marshall School of Business. Prior to joining USC, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Science of Information. He received his PhD and MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 2014 and 2010. His research interests are broadly in the area of high-dimensional statistics, machine learning, optimization, and graphical models. Adel has won several awards, including the Zumberge Faculty Research and Innovation Fund (2017), Google Faculty Research Award (2016), the Thomas Cover dissertation award from IEEE Society (2015), the CSoI Postdoctoral Fellowship (2014), Stanford Graduate Fellowship (2010-2012), and the Stanford Electrical Engineering Fellowship (2009).

PhD Columbia University; B.S. Cornell University

Song-Hee Kim is an operations management scholar, whose research interests focus on using empirical and statistical analysis to build models for decision-making. She has a particular interest in healthcare applications, and has been actively involved in collaborative research projects with several hospitals including Keck Hospital of USC, Yale New Haven Hospital, Kaiser Permanente Northern California and Samsung Medical Center in South Korea. Her research has been published in Management Science, Operations Research, and Manufacturing & Service Operations Management. Song-Hee completed her PhD in Operations Research from Columbia University and earned her BS in Operations Research and Information Engineering from Cornell University. Prior to joining the Marshall School, she was a postdoctoral associate at the Yale School of Management.

Jason Lee is an assistant professor in Data Sciences and Operations at the University of Southern California. Prior to that, he was a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley working with Michael Jordan. Jason received his PhD at Stanford University advised by Trevor Hastie and Jonathan Taylor. His research interests are in statistics, machine learning, and optimization. Lately, he has worked on high dimensional statistical inference, analysis of non-convex optimization algorithms, and theory for deep learning.

PhD, Princeton University; MS, BS, University of Science and Technology of China

Jinchi Lv's research interests include high dimensional statistical inference, variable selection and machine learning, financial econometrics, and nonparametric and semiparametric methods. His papers have been published in the Annals of Statistics, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Statistica Sinica, Journal of Econometrics, and Journal of Financial Econometrics. He serves as an associate editor of Statistica Sinica since 2008. He is the recipient of National Science Foundation CAREER Award, National Science Foundation Grant, 2008 Zumberge Individual Award from USC's James H. Zumberge Faculty Research and Innovation Fund, and 2009 Dean's Award for Research Excellence.

PhD, MA, UCLA; BA, Pitzer College

Ann Majchrzak is the USC Associates Chaired Professor of Business Administration for the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. She is in the Department of Data Sciences and Operations at Marshall where she teaches digital innovation. She holds concurrent appointments as a visiting professor at Esade Business School, Ramon Llull University, Barcelona, and at LUISS, Rome School of Business and Management in the areas of Innovation and Organization. She is also an external expert for the Information Systems and Innovation Group, Department of Management at the London School of Economics.

Inga Maslova is an applied statistician specializing in time series analysis, machine learning, wavelet techniques, functional data analysis, big data, and applications to finance, business analytics, economics, hydrology, remote sensing, precision agriculture, and climate change problems.

She has taught and developed courses in statistical learning, business statistics, data analytics and visualization. To her classroom she brings her own experience from consulting for Cisco, working with the World Bank on business cycle synchronization; analyzing drone data to help farmers make better crop management decisions at Utah Water Research Lab; using statistical learning models to forecast commodity prices.

In 2018 she received a Golden Apple Teaching Award for teaching excellence.
Before joining USC, Inga was a faculty at American University, Washington DC.
She received her BS (Summa Cum Laude) in Mathematical Statistics from Vilnius University, Lithuania; MS and PhD in Statistics from Utah State University.

Milan Miric joined the IS Group within the DSO Department in 2016. His research tries to understand basic questions about how firms can capture and create value in digital industries. In particular, his research tries to understand how the unique structural features of digital industries (network effects, low costs of innovating, non-monetary motivations) influence the process by which firms capture and create value. His work is largely empirical combining large-scale panel datasets with interviews and field work. His research work draws heavily on insights from psychology, economics, and sociology but tries to contribute to the literature on information systems and innovation.

PhD, Stanford University; MStat, BStat, Indian Statistical Institute

Gourab Mukherjee is a statistician with research interests in statistical prediction analysis. His work includes the design of efficient probability forecasting strategies for repeated investments, sports betting and health sciences. He is currently working on estimation of predictive density in high-dimensional models with structural constraints. He is also involved in long-term collaborative studies on the development of advanced vaccines where he helps scientists with multi-parametric analysis of cell-signaling data-sets.

PhD, Stanford University; BS, Sharif University of Technology

Hamid Nazerzadeh is an Associate Professor in the Data Sciences and Operations department at USC Marshall School of Business. His research focuses on mechanism design and optimization algorithms and their applications in operations and monetization of online markets. He has worked at Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Google research labs. He is the recipient of Yahoo! Ph.D. Student Fellowship Award (2007), Honorable Mention in George Dantzig Dissertation Awards (2009), Google Faculty Research Award (2013), Marshall Dean's Award for Research Excellence (2014), and INFORMS Revenue Management and Pricing Section Prize (2014).

PhD, University of Southern California; MBA, University of Washington; BEng, Waseda University

Hiroshi Ochiumi is an operations management scholar. His research interests include supply chain management, design and analysis of contracts, and behavioral aspects of decision making. He teaches classes on operations management and designing spreadsheet-based business models. Prior to receiving his PhD, Professor Ochiumi worked for Hilti Japan and Goldman Sachs.

Ph.D. USC; B.S. Illnois State University

Dr. Francis Pereira received his Ph.D. in Political Economy and Public Policy from the University of Southern California. He has published over 15 articles in such prestigious journals as the Journal of Communications Networks.

Zal Phiroz is an established specialist on marketing and global supply chain practices, within global impact areas including the fast moving consumer goods and IT industry. He has held a number of executive and senior management roles, including appointments at Proctor & Gamble (NYSE:PG) and TELUS (NYSE:T). He is a graduate of the University of Windsor’s Computer Science program (BCS, BS-Hons), and holds an MBA in International Finance. In addition to his faculty commitments, he has spoken at TEDx, OPAL and UN, and consults on a number of supply chain projects globally.

PhD, MPhil, MS, New York University; BA, Cornell University

Dawn Porter is a statistician who has published in Management Science and is the coauthor of Basic Econometrics (fifth edition). Prior to joining USC, she served on the faculty at Georgetown University. Professor Porter has consulted for KPMG Consulting, Ginnie Mae, Inc., and Toys R Us.

PhD, MS, Carnegie Mellon University; MBA, Indian Institute of Management - Ahmedabad; BTech, Indian Institute of Technology - Madras

Raj Rajagopalan's research covers capacity and technology acquisition, supply chain management, and product variety and its impact on operations performance. He has published in journals such as Management Science, Production and Operations Management, and Operations Research. He served as a Department Editor at IIE Transactions, Senior Editor at Production and Operations Management, and as an Associate Editor at Management Science and Operations Research. Professor Rajagopalan has consulted for Johnson and Johnson, Fidelity Investments, and Hewlett Packard. He has taught courses in operations and supply chain management in the MBA and Executive MBA programs.

PhD, MS, Stanford University; BTech, IIT Delhi

Ramandeep S. Randhawa is an operations research scholar whose research interests include designing service systems, revenue management, stochastic modeling, and mechanism and incentive design. His work has been published in journals that include Management Science, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, and Operations Research. Prior to joining the Marshall School, he was a faculty member at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas.

Phil Rogers received a B.S. in Mathematics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and both an M.S. and Ph.D. in Operations Research from the University of California at Berkeley, with minors in Statistics and Mathematical Economics. During a 33-year career at Exxon Corporation, Phil developed many sophisticated mathematical models that were used to optimize a wide variety of the Corporation's business operations. He then joined the University of Houston, where he taught courses in statistics, business modeling and decision making and was awarded a university-wide teaching excellence award. Following a year-and-a-half stay at Arizona State University, where he taught business modeling and optimization, Phil joined the Marshall School of Business, where he coordinates the undergraduate core statistics course and teaches in the MBA program.

PhD, MS, Stanford University; BA, UC-Berkeley

Paat Rusmevichientong's research focuses on large-scale stochastic optimization problems, with applications to market systems, supply chains, and revenue management. His research has been published in Management Science, Operations Research, and Mathematics of Operations Research. He received the INFORMS George B. Dantzig Dissertation award in 2003 and the NSF CAREER award in 2008. Prior to joining USC, he was a faculty member in the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering at Cornell University, where he was voted Professor of the Year in 2009 and 2011.

PhD, MS, Utah State University; MS, BS: Lebanese American University

Abbass Sharif’s specialty is in the field of statistical computing and data visualization. Professor Sharif has developed and published new multivariate visualization techniques for functional data and currently he is developing visualization techniques to study brain activity data collected via the near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) technology. Professor Sharif teaches statistics courses that range from introductory statistics to data analysis for decision-making through to advanced modern statistical learning techniques.

Peng is interested in developing quantitative methodologies for the betterment of society. His current research focuses on optimization in matching markets, with applications in school choice, public housing, and online marketplaces. His research on school choice has won multiple awards, including the ACM SIGecom Doctoral Dissertation Award, the INFORMS Public Sector Operations Best Paper Competition, and the INFORMS Doing Good with Good Operations OR Student Paper Competition. Prior to joining USC, he completed a PhD in operations research at MIT, and was a post-doctoral researcher at Microsoft Research.

PhD, MA, University of Southern California; BA, University of Michigan

Douglas Shook specializes in the design, implementation and management of information technology, with particular focus on data management, data modeling, and information technology architecture. His academic research centers on the interaction of organizational structure and the effective use of computer-mediated information and communication systems. He has published in Organizational Science and the Journal of Management Studies. Professor Shook received the Excellence in Teaching Award from the Marshall Business Student Government in 2003-2004, the "Teaching Has No Boundaries" award from USC for 2001-2002, Marshall's Golden Apple Award in 1996, 1999, 2001, 2005, and 2009.

PhD, University of British Columbia; MS, BS, University of Zagreb

Greys Sošić holds a PhD from the University of British Columbia, and a master's and a bachelor's degree from the University of Zagreb, Croatia. Her research interests include supply chain management, sustainability, competition and cooperation in supply chains, with emphasis on coalition stability. Her work has been published in Management Science, Operations Research, M&SOM, and POMS. Greys is an Associate Editor for Management Science, MSOM, IIE Transactions, and POMS. She has received Dean's Awards for Research Excellence, MSOM Meritorious Service Award, Management Science Distinguished and Meritorious Service Award. She has been teaching courses on supply chain management, sustainability, and sourcing.

PhD, Carnegie Mellon University; MBA, University of Delhi; BEng, University of Madras

Ashok Srinivasan's research interests include supply-chain management, nonprofit management, and productivity analysis. His research has appeared in Management Science, Operations Research, European Journal of Operational Research, and Managerial and Decision Economics, including "Leadership and Competition in Network Supply Chains," with P. Majumder, that appeared in Management Science in June 2008.

Tianshu Sun's research conducted in collaboration with leading private and public sector platforms addresses how firms can use large-scale field experiments in conjunction with big data to improve business decisions. His current research focuses on understanding 1) how digital platforms can use IT-enabled and data-driven interventions to influence social sharing among individuals, and 2) how organizations can leverage mobile and Internet of Things to integrate individuals' online and offline experience. Tianshu has worked closely with a variety of organizations including Facebook and Alibaba. Many findings from these studies have been implemented by collaborating organizations. Tianshu has given over 70 talks at top universities and international conferences, and has research papers published in Management Science, Information Systems Economics, and Journal of Health Economics. Tianshu's research has received 9 Best Paper Awards (ICIS,CIST,WITS,INFORMS), and has been supported by grants from Adobe and Marketing Science Institute.

PhD, University of Pennsylvania; BS, Peking University

Wenguang Sun is a statistician whose research interests include large-scale multiple testing, high-dimensional inference, statistical decision theory, and causal inference. His research has been published in leading statistical journals including Journal of the American Statistical Association and Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B. Professor has won several research awards including the ENAR Distinguished Student Paper Award and Saul Winegrad Dissertation Award from University of Pennsylvania. He received a grant from the National Science Foundation on large-scale multiple testing. Prior to joining USC, he was a faculty member at the Department of Statistics at North Carolina State University.

PhD, Princeton University; BS, University of Toronto

Xin Tong's research interests are in the areas of high dimensional statistical inference, learning theory, and social and economic networks. He has published papers in journals that include Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B and the Journal of Machine Learning Research. Professor Tong won The Zellner Thesis Award in Business and Economic Statistics 2013.

MBA, B.S., California Polytechnic University, Pomona

A specialist in Operation Excellence, Application of Lean Six Sigma(LSS) and an expert in Global Supply Chain Management(GSCM), Nick Vyas has implemented process improvements for over 300 projects globally that have increased efficiency for clients in the fields of health care, service, military, retail, and end-to-end supply chain. As the Executive Director and Co-founder of USC Marshall’s Center for GSCM and as an Assistant Professor of Clinical Data Sciences & Operations, Vyas is educating the next generation of business leaders. Previously, Vyas had taught GSCM and LSS courses at CalPoly Pomona.
Working closely with students, Vyas consulted for over 25 global operations across various sectors. He integrated technology and directed teams that both optimized speed-to-market and managed cost/quality.

PhD, MA, Stanford University; BA, Claremont McKenna College

Amy Ward's research focuses on the approximation and control of stochastic systems, with applications to the service industry. Much of her past work has focused on the impact of customer impatience and abandonments on performance. Her recent work investigates the interactions between behavioral incentives and operational efficiency in service systems, with a focus on call centers. Her research has been published in Operations Research, Mathematics of Operations Research, and Manufacturing & Service Operations Management. She is an associate editor for Operations Research, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, and Stochastic Systems.

PhD, MS, Purdue University; BS, College of the City of New York

Jonathan Yormark has published papers in the Journal of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, Management Science, and OMEGA: The International Journal of Management Science.

PhD, MA, University of Florida; BA, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Leon Yang Zhu (Chu) is an operations management scholar whose research interests include contract and market mechanism design, game theory, and applied optimization. Professor Zhu's papers have been published in the American Economic Review, European Journal of Operational Research, International Journal of Industrial Organization, Journal of Economic Theory, Management Science, Operations Research, and Rand Journal of Economics.