I am fortunate to have the opportunity to work with many fantastic students. Here’s my mentoring plan for students and postdocs. My current research group is:

Current PhD Students and Postdocs: 

  • Tianjiao Li (Started Fall 2025: postdoc, MIT)
  • Jonathan Zhou (Started Fall 2025: ORC, MIT (jointly coadvised with Rahul Mazumdar, MIT Sloan))
  • Madeleine Pollack (Started Fall 2023: ORC, MIT – NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Awardee)

Here are some pictures from our group hangouts and outings.

What does it take to have a successful PhD? Here are some of my thoughts about this: The Unwritten Curriculum.

Current Visiting Students

Current Masters and Undergraduate Students: 

  • Lauren Zhang (MBAn, MIT)
  • Ayela Chughtai (MBAn, MIT)
  • Milani Chatterji-Len (LGO, MIT) (jointly co-advised with Lydia Bourouiba and Alexander Kirsch at NextEra Energy)

Current Capstone Advisees: 

  • Barath Velmurugan (Wayward)
  • Mrugank Pednekar (Wayward)

Prospective Students: 

If you are already an MIT student (irrespective of the program), please contact me directly. An ideal candidate for my lab would have had some exposure to optimization, algorithm design, and machine learning (it’s okay if you don’t know all three).

I am affiliated with the Operations Research Center (ORC) at MIT, LIDS and CCSE at MIT. Apply to these PhD programs and mention my name in your application if you’d like to work with me. I’m open to advising students from other programs at MIT as well.

If you are interested in an internship, you can email me directly. If you have taken courses in optimization or algorithms and have a decent GPA, this will help.

Past PhDs, Masters, and Postdocs:

  • Jai Moondra (ACO/CS PhD Georgia Tech –> Carnegie Mellon University (Postdoc))
  • Jad Salem (ACO/Math PhD Georgia Tech –> Assistant Professor of Mathematics, US Naval Academy)
  • Reuben Tate (ACO/Math PhD Georgia Tech –> Los Alamos National Labs)
  • Hassan Mortagy (OR/ISyE PhD Georgia Tech –> OR Scientist at Roadie Inc./UPS)
  • Bhargavi Lanka (MBAn, MIT –> Mckinsey & Company)
  • Alec Zhu (Math UG, MIT –> Princeton PhD ORFE)
  • Akoua Orsot (MBAn, MIT)
  • Joshua Cai (MBAn, MIT)  (jointly co-advised with Chara Podimata, MIT Sloan)
  • Thomas Daillak (Masters ORC, MIT –> PhD ORC MIT)
  • Ju Young (Jessie) Lee (MEng EECS, MIT)
  • Prateek Gautam (MBAn, MIT)
  • Atharva Navarthe (MBAn MIT, Capstone with Comcast 2025)
  • Andres Camarillo (MBAn MIT, Capstone with Comcast 2025)
  • Jeiyi Wang (MBAn MIT, Capstone with Comcast 2025)
  • Yuki Yu (MBAn MIT, Capstone with Comcast 2025)
  • Ghazanfar Yezdan (MBAn MIT, Capstone with Cognira 2024 –> Consultant at IQVIA)
  • Rory Wilson (MBAn MIT, Capstone with Cognira 2024–> Data Scientist at TaxAct)
  • Seth Chatterton (MBAn MIT, Capstone with Accenture 2024 –> ML Scientist at Wayfair)
  • Pranav Shankar Girish (MBAn MIT, Capstone with Accenture 2024 –> Data Scientist at Palantir)
  • Yichen (Eric) Yu (MFin, MIT)
  • Cameron Dahan (MFin, MIT –> Squarepoint Capital)
  • Raghav Manoharan Jayanthi (MBAn/MIT –> Data Scientist at C3.ai)
  • Mehrdad Ghadiri (postdoc MIT)
  • Brandon Augustino (postdoc MIT –> Senior Associate, Quantum Computing at JPMorgan Chase & Co.)