Experience

Education

Research Interests

• Urban computing and sustainable urban operations
• Mobility-on-demand systems
• Mobile crowdsourcing
• Last-mile logistics
• Agent-based modeling and simulation
• Large-scale optimization models and computational methods

Honors and Awards

• Best Student Paper Award: Integrating Empirical Analysis into Analytical Framework: An Integrated Model Structure for On-Demand Transportation, 2021 INFORMS Conference on Service Science, 2021.
• Finalist, INFORMS Innovative Applications in Analytics Award (IAAA): Driver Guidance System for Taxi Drivers, 2020.
• Lee Kong Chian Fellowship for Research Excellence, Singapore Management University, 2019-2020.
• Best Application Demo: A Driver Guidance System for Taxis in Singapore, Seventeenth International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS-18), 2018.
• First Prize, CIKM AnalytiCup: DataSpark Mobility Open-Task Challenge: Predicting Taxi Demand-Supply Mismatches to Dynamically Position Mobility-on-Demand Services, Twenty-Sixth ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM-17), 2017.
• Honorable Mention, Best of CSCW Award: Campus-scale mobile crowd-tasking: Deployment and behavioral insights, Nineteenth ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW-16), 2016.
• Lee Kong Chian Fellowship for Research Excellence, Singapore Management University, 2015-2016.
• Finalist, George B. Dantzig Dissertation Award: Game-theoretic Approaches for Complex Systems Optimization, presented by INFORMS, 2007.
• Wilson Prize (best student paper in manufacturing systems): Sampled fictitious play for multi-action stochastic dynamic programs, Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering, University of Michigan, 2005.
• INFORMS Future Academician Colloquium, 2005.
• Rackham Travel Grant, Rackham Graduate School, University of Michigan, 2003, 2004, 2005.
• AAAI Student Scholarship for 18th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2003.
• President's Award (top 5% of the class), National Taiwan University, 1994.

Sponsored Research

• PI: "Enabling Sustainable Point-to-Point Transport Service via Behavioral Game Theory".
  Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund Tier 1, January 2024 - December 2025, S$124,990.
• Co-PI: "The Impacts of On-demand Platforms under Individual Choice Endogeneity" (with Ying Xu (SUTD) as PI).
  Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund Tier 2, 2023 - 2025, S$382,187.
• PI: "Learning by Doing in the Age of Big Data".
  Ministry of Education Social Science Research Thematic Grant, Aug 2021 - Jul 2024, S$579,318.
• PI: "Smart Barrier-Free Access (SmartBFA) 2.0".
  Mercurics, May 2021 - Apr 2022, S$50,000.
• Co-PI: "Not for Girls?: Gender Imbalance in STEM and Its impact on Female Students' Creative Performance" (with Chi-Ying Cheng).
  Ministry of Education Tertiary Education Research Fund, June 2021 - May 2023, S$192,673.
• PI: "Intelligent Taxi Queue Management".
  Changi Airport Group, Oct 2019 - Sep 2021, S$200,000.
• Co-Lead PI: Fujitsu-SMU Urban Computing and Engineering Lab (with Hoong Chuin Lau).
  Jointly funded by Fujitsu and National Research Foundation, Nov 2014 - Oct 2019, S$27,000,000.
• Co-PI: "Context-Aware Large-Scale Mobile Crowd-Sourcing" (with Archan Misra).
  Xerox Research Center India (XRCI), July 2013 - July 2016, USD$150,000
• Co-PI: "Coordinating Automated Para-Transit Service Operations" (with Hoong Chuin Lau).
  Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology Centre, Jan 2011 - Dec 2015, S$482,515.
• PI: "Optimizing Taxi Fleet Operations".
  Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology Centre, Nov 2010 - Aug 2011, S$46,211.
• PI: "Commodity Trading Simulation".
  The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, Oct 2010 - Mar 2011, S$4,589 (equivalent credit).
• Co-PI: "Policy Implications of Position Limits: An Agent-based Analysis" (with Bernard Lee and Annie Koh).
  The Institute for Financial Markets, May 2010 - Sep 2010, USD$15,000.
• PI: "Creating a Better Commodity Trading Simulation - A Multi-Agent Approach".
  SMU International Trading Institute, July 2008 - June 2009, S$37,350.
• PI: "Exploring Agent-based Computational Models".
  Wharton-SMU Research Centre, May 2008 - May 2009, S$39,050
• PI: "Market-Based Approaches for Dynamic Resource Allocation Problems".
  SMU Office of Research, Mar 2007 - Feb 2008, S$30,100.
• PI: "Designing the Market Game for a Commodity Trading Simulation".
  International Enterprise Singapore, Feb 2007 - Jan 2008, S$47,266.

Publications & Presentations

Course Taught

• CS603: Multi-agent Systems (Postgraduate), 2018 - now
• CS426 (formerly IS418): Agent-based Modeling & Simulation, 2017 - now
• COR-IS1702 (formerly IS103): Computational Thinking, 2013 - now
• IS418: Intelligent Business Gaming, 2010 - 2017
• IS102: Computer as an Analysis Tool, 2007 - 2013
• Commodity Trading Simulation, 2007 - 2011
• IS418: Intelligent Agent Design & Applications, 2007 - 2008
• Quantitative Finance Workshop: Introduction to C++, 2007 - 2009
• Computational Optimization with Python, 2022 (for Singapore Data Science Consortium)

Thesis Chair (PhD)

• Jian Bin Liew, August 2023 - now
• Pang Jin Tan, August 2021 - now
• Qian Shao, August 2020 - now
  • Thesis Title: Real-world Considerations in Human Decision Making
  • Awarded SMU Presidential Doctoral Fellowship, 2023.
• Mengyu Ji, August 2019 - July 2023
  • Thesis Title: Analyzing Taxi Drivers' Decision-making and Recommending Strategies for Enhanced Performance: A Data-driven Approach
  • Assistant Professor, Luoyang Institute of Science and Technology, China.
• Chung-Kyun Han, January 2016 - December 2020
  • Thesis Title: Efficient Algorithms for Trajectory-Aware Mobile Crowdsourcing
  • Awarded SMU Presidential Doctoral Fellowship, 2020.
  • Engineering Manager, LG Display.
• Larry Lin (co-supervised with Hoong Chuin Lau), January 2014 - December 2018
  • Thesis Title: Modeling Movement Decisions in Networks: A Discrete Choice Model Approach
  • Data Scientist, Grab.
• Cen Chen (co-supervised with Hoong Chuin Lau), January 2013 - June 2017
  • Thesis Title: Recommending Personalized Schedules in Urban Environments
  • Associate Professor, School of Data Science and Engineering, East China Normal University.
• Jiali Du (co-supervised with Hoong Chuin Lau), July 2012 - June 2017
  • Thesis Title: Proactive and Reactive Strategies to Handle Surges in Urban Crowds
  • Data Scientist, Booking.com.

Thesis Chair (EngD)

• Asyikeen Azhar (co-supervised with Aldy Gunawan), August 2020 - May 2024
  • Thesis Title: Enabling Sustainable Mining via AI-based Approaches
  • Senior Data Scientist, Rio Tinto.

Thesis Chair (Master)

• Duc Thien Nguyen (co-supervised with Hoong Chuin Lau), March 2011 - July 2014
• Long Foong Liow (co-supervised with Hoong Chuin Lau), August 2009 - June 2012

Thesis Committee Member (PhD)

• Dexun Li (Chair: Pradeep Varakantham)
• Jingfeng Yang (Chair: Hoong Chuin Lau)
• Joe Waldy (Chair: Hoong Chuin Lau)
• Rajiv Kumar (Chair: Pradeep Varakantham)
• Meghna Lowalekar (Chair: Pradeep Varakantham)
• Tanvi Verma (Chair: Pradeep Varakantham & Hoong Chuin Lau)
• Pritee Agrawal (Chair: Pradeep Varakantham)
• Na Fu (Chair: Hoong Chuin Lau)

Professional Activities