Welcome to the 8th annual YinzOR Conference, hosted by the CMU INFORMS Student Chapter. We were delighted to bring together over 80 students and researchers, alongside faculty, industry mentors, and friends, for a two-day program on August 29-30th celebrating scholarship, intellectual curiosity, and the perseverance that research demands. We are grateful to our generous sponsors, Hexaly and Highmark Health, whose support helped make the conference possible, from funding and materials to tote bags full of thoughtful gifts. Thank you for investing in our community.
The conference opened with remarks from Professor Alan Scheller-Wolf (Carnegie Mellon University), who drew on his doctoral journey to speak directly to early-career researchers about what it means to build a life in scholarship. He emphasized that progress is rarely linear, as strong ideas often begin as imperfect drafts, feedback can be especially valuable when sought early, and setbacks are a normal part of pursuing ambitious questions. He encouraged students to stay open to unexpected sources of inspiration and to treat community not as an extra but as a core input to good research. His message set the tone for our conference: curiosity, sustained effort, and a community that helps ideas grow.
Across the program, invited speakers highlighted a range of OR/MS frontiers. Professor Léonard Boussioux (University of Washington) discussed how human–AI collaboration can support early-stage problem solving and how data-driven methods can help allocate resources in fast-moving environments. Professor Oliver Hinder (University of Pittsburgh) shared practical ideas for scaling optimization to very large problems, and Professor Peter Zhang (Carnegie Mellon University) offered perspectives on making robust decisions under uncertainty. We also welcomed Fred Gardi (Founder & CEO, Hexaly), who provided an industry view on how modern solver technology helps turn complex combinatorial models into actionable solutions.
Student research was at the center of YinzOR. The first day concluded with the annual Flash Talk Competition, judged by Professors Emily Diana, Michael Li, and Andrew Li, featuring participants from Princeton University, MIT, UNC Chapel Hill, Cornell Tech, Carnegie Mellon University, Northwestern University, and Lehigh University. Congratulations to our First, Second, and Third Place winners, as well as our Fan Favorite: Nikolaos Dimou, Sherry Sarkar, Lorraine Yuan, and Pouya Sampourmahani. The evening continued with dinner catered by Pittsburgh favorite Piada.
On day two, Professor Huiwen Jia (UC Berkeley) presented research on decision-making with data and uncertainty, including applications to pricing, and Lin An (5th-year PhD candidate, Carnegie Mellon University) discussed real-time personalization and the challenge of turning predictive models into fast decisions in live systems. The afternoon Poster Presentation Session brought together students from Georgia Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Pittsburgh, University of Florida, Cornell University, Cornell Tech, USC, Northwestern University, and UNC Chapel Hill. Congratulations to our poster awardees: Wenbin Zhou, Haoyun Deng, Wei Gu, and Weiyuan Li, and thank you to our faculty judges, Professors Huiwen Jia, Peter Zhang, and Gerard Cornuéjols, for their thoughtful feedback.
To close the conference, Professor Ted Ralphs (Lehigh University) shared insights on optimization theory and multiobjective decision-making, and Professor Michael Lingzhi Li (Harvard Business School) discussed learning in settings where decisions are sequential and often irreversible. Our warm closing remarks and thoughtful reflections were delivered by Professor Fatma Kılınç-Karzan, and the conference ended with Happy Hour in the PNC Room, where participants continued conversations and enjoyed a panoramic view of Pittsburgh.
At its core, YinzOR is about community and creating a welcoming space where students can share work-in-progress, receive guiding feedback, and connect across institutions and subfields. As the CMU INFORMS Student Chapter, we thank all speakers, attendees, sponsors, judges, and volunteers for making YinzOR Conference 2025 a success. We look forward to welcoming you again next year.
YinzOR 2025 Organizing Team: Helia Niaparast (Chair), Nilsu Uzunlar (Sponsor Chair), Lin An (Speaker Co-Chair), Macarena Navarro (Speaker Co-Chair), H. Satyam Verma (Webmaster Co-Chair), Emily Cai (Webmaster Co-Chair, Logistics Co-Chair), Sebastian Vasquez (Logistics Co-Chair), Daniel Yamín (Marketing Co-Chair), Zongqi (Aurora) Yu (Marketing Co-Chair), Guanting Wu (Flash Talk and Poster Session Co-Chair), and Stephen Arndt (Flash Talk and Poster Session Co-Chair).
