Assaf Zeevi

Kravis Professor of Business: Decision, Risk, and Operations Division

Contact: Office: 1115 Kravis; Phone: (212) 8549678; E-mail: [email protected]

Links: Personal Website; Curriculum Vitae

Assaf Zeevi is the Kravis Professor of Business at the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University. His research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of Operations Research, Statistics, and Machine Learning. In particular, he has been developing theory and algorithms for reinforcement learning, Bandit problems, stochastic optimization, statistical learning and stochastic networks. Application domains include online retail platforms, healthcare analytics, dynamic pricing engines, recommender systems, and social learning in online marketplaces.

Assaf received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. (Cum Laude) from the Technion, in Israel, and subsequently his Ph.D. from Stanford University. He spent time as a visitor at Stanford University, the Technion and Tel Aviv University. He is the recipient of several teaching and research awards including a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation, an IBM Faculty Award, Google Research Award, as well as several best paper awards including the 2019 Lanchester Prize. Assaf has recently served a term as Vice Dean at Columbia Business School and Editor-in-Chief of Stochastic Systems (the flagship journal of INFORMS' Applied Probability Society). He also serves on various other editorial boards and program committees in the Operations Research and Machine Learning communities, as well as scientific advisory boards for startup companies in the high technology sector.

Education: BSc, Technion; MS, 1997; MS, Stanford; PhD, 2001

Joined CBS: 2001

All Activities

Vashist Avadhanula (graduated 2018, co-advised with S. Agrawal and V. Goyal)
Current Position: Head of Data Science, Retail Media Platform, Moloco
Thesis title: The MNL-Bandit Problem: Theory and Applications;

Dongwook Shin (graduated 2017, co-advised with M. Broadie)
Current position: Assistant Professor, Business School, HKUST (Hong Kong)
Thesis title: Tractable Algorithms for Dynamic Learning and Pricing with Online Product Reviews

Oren Anava (graduated 2016, co-advised with S. Mannor and E. Hazan)
Current position: Research staff member, Voleon
Thesis title: Machine Learning and Temporal Data

John Yao (graduated 2015, co-advised with C. Maglaras)
Current position: Assistant Professor, IE department, University of Miami
Thesis title:Asymptotic Analysis of Service Systems with Congestion Sensitive Customers

Yonatan Gur (graduated 2013, co-advised with O. Besbes)
Current position: Assistant Professor, GSB, Stanford University
Thesis title: Sequential Optimization in a Changing Environment: Theory and Application to Content Recommendation Systems

Bora Keskin (graduated 2012, co-advised with J.M Harrison)
Current position: Assistant Professor, Booth GSB, Chicago University
Thesis title: Learning and earning; Algorithms and Analysis

Denis Saure (graduated 2011, co-advised with O. Besbes)
Current position: Associate Professor, ISE Department, University of Chile
Thesis title: Essays in Consumer Choice-based Assortment Planning

Deniz Cicek ( graduated 20, co-advised with M. Broadie)
First position: Barclay's capital
Thesis title: Topics in Stochastic Approximation

Itay Gurvich ( graduated 2008, co-advised with C. Maglaras and W. Whitt )
Current position: Associate Professor, ORIE, Cornell University
Thesis title: Staffing and Control of Many Server Service Systems
Omar Besbes (graduated 2007)
Current position: Associate Professor, Graduate School of Business, Columbia University
Thesis title: Revenue Management under Model Uncertainty: Theory and Methods
Zhen Wu (graduated 2006)
First position: Research Associate, CSFB
Thesis title: Essays on Portfolio Credit Risk
Achal Bassamboo (graduated 2005, co-advised with Mike Harrison )
Current position: Professor, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
Thesis title: Pointwise Stationary Fluid Models for the Design and Control of Stochastic Processing Networks
Gad Allon (graduated 2005, primary adviser Awi Federgruen)
Current position: Professor, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
Thesis title: Competition in Service Industries
Roy Mashal (graduated 2003)
First position: Vice President, Lehman Brothers
Thesis title: Inferring Dependencies Between Financial Assets with Applications to Multiname Credit Derivatives

Assaf Zeevi

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