About me

I a Ph.D. student in Industrial and System Engineering at the University of Southern California in the 2022 Fall. My research advisor is Prof. Maged M. Dessouky. I received my master’s degree at Columbia University in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research. I received my Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Zhejiang University and was a visiting student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My previous supervisors were Prof. Sharon Di, Prof. Weifei Hu, and Prof. Xin Wang. Click here to view my up-to-date resume. If you want to know more about me, please feel free to contact me (wzhao009@usc.edu).

RESEARCH INTEREST

My research interest lies in developing models and algorithms leveraging operations research and machine learning for real-world decision-making problems. I regard answering the following question as my academic goal: how to design learning-based approaches for large-scale system so that they can outperform traditional, optimization-driven methods? Overall, my research interests include

Methodology. Combinatorial Optimization, Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

Application. Shared Mobility, Supply Chain

PUBLICATIONS

Journal

• Weifei Hu, Wentao Zhao, Yeqing Wang, Zhenyu Liu, Jin Cheng, Jianrong Tan, Design optimization of composite wind turbine blades considering tortuous lightning strike and non-proportional multi-axial fatigue damage, Engineering Optimization. doi

Conference

• Wentao Zhao, Yikang Hua, Xin Wang, Energy-sponge Service in Electric Vehicle Sharing System, Transportation Research Board 2021. (Poster) POST

• Weifei Hu, Wentao Zhao(Presenter), Yeqing Wang, Zhenyu Liu, Jianrong Tan, Reliability Analysis of Wind Turbine Blades Considering Lightning Strike, North America Wind Energy Academy WindTech 2019 Conference. (Presentation) PPT doi

PAPERS UNDER REVIEW

• Wentao Zhao, Yikang Hua, Xin Wang, Energy-sponge Electric Vehicle Sharing System Design. (Under 3rd round review at Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technology, 2023)