【Mingli Lecture Hall, 2021, 11th】Professor Dan Zhang, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA
On January 18, 2021, [Mingli Lecture Hall 2021 Issue 11] wasfortunate to invite Professor Dan Zhang from the University of Colorado at Boulder to bring an academic report entitled "Recent Results on Approximate Linear Programming for Network Revenue Management" , the report adopts the form of online live broadcast of Tencent meeting. Many teachers and students, including some leaders, teachers, masters and doctoral students of the School of Management and Economics, attended this lecture. The host is Professor Li Guo from the Department of Technology, Economics and Strategic Management of the School of Management and Economics.
In his report, Professor Dan Zhang noted that approximate dynamic programming based on linear programming has received much attention in the recent literature.In this approach, high-dimensional dynamic programming is approximated as a large-scale linear programming to solve the problem of dimensionality catastrophe.Linear programming formulas are called approximate linear programming (ALPs) and often have a large number of decision variables and constraints.Therefore, a major challenge of the approach lies in the effective solution of the Alpine problem.Based on this, Professor Dan Zhang explains the latest results of the approximate linear planning of the network income management and the application of the network revenue management problems.Furthermore, Professor Dan Zhang was deeply inspired by noting future research directions and applications of other business issues.
After the report, Professor Dan Zhang and the participating teachers and students had a heated discussion and exchange. The report was warm and well received by the majority of teachers and students!
Speaker profile:
Dan Zhang is Professor of Operations Management at Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado Boulder. Dr. Zhang’s primary research interest is revenue management and approximate dynamic programming. He frequently speaks at conferences, companies, and academic institutions, and consults in his area of expertise. Between 2017 and 2018, he is the chair of INFORMS Pricing and Revenue Management Section, an international society of pricing and revenue management researchers and professionals. He was the Department Editor for the Revenue Management and Pricing Area at the journal Decision Sciences between 2017 and 2018 and a Senior Editor for the journal Production and Operations Management between 2014 and 2018. He is currently Department Editor of Revenue Management Area at Production and Operations Management, an Associate Editor at both INFORMS Journal on Computing and Manufacturing and Service Operations Management. Dr. Zhang teaches operations management, statistics, and data analytics courses at all levels. He also offered PhD level courses on Operations Management Research and Approximate Dynamic Programming at several universities. Together with two colleagues, he has been offering a five-course specialization on Data Analytics for Business since September 2016 on the MOOC platform Coursera, which has enrolled over 130,000 students worldwide. Dr. Zhang held visiting appointments at Ross School of Business, University of Michigan and College of Business, City University of Hong Kong. He is a Changjiang Chaired Professor awarded by the Chinese Ministry of Education.
