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Title
Assistant Professor
Faculty Profile

My School
The Paul Merage School of Business

Area of Study/Expertise
Electricity Market Design
Sustainable Operations
Energy Systems
Optimization and Algorithms
Reinforcement Learning
Game Theory
Control and Modeling of Complex Systems
Large Scale Networked Dynamical Systems
Multi-Agent Systems

Office Location
SB2 315

Email
z.gao@uci.edu

Zuguang Gao

Welcome! I am an Assistant Professor of Operations and Decision Technologies at the Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine.

My research interests generally lie in sustainable operations, broadly defined, with a major focus on electricity market design, power/energy systems, and environmental policy, as well as some other areas related to sustainability (such as supply chains).

I am have been working on a wide range of research projects, drawing tools from mathematical modeling, optimization, control, game theory, reinforcement learning, algorithm design and data analysis. I also enjoy collaborations with researchers in academia, Argonne National Laboratory (Energy Systems Division), and industry (including Flexport and Uber).

Previously, I received my Ph.D. (2023) and MBA (2022) degrees from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, advised by Prof. John R. Birge and Prof. Varun Gupta. Prior to Chicago, I received my B.S. (2015) and M.S. (2017) degrees, from the Department of Electrical and Computer EngineeringUniversity of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where I was also affiliated with the Coordinated Science Laboratory, and my thesis advisor was Prof. Tamer Başar.

Employment

  • The Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine
    • Assistant Professor, Operations and Decision Technologies, July 2023 – present
  • Argonne National Laboratory
    • Research Aide, April – August 2022
  • Uber Technologies, Inc.
    • Applied Scientist PhD Intern, May – August 2022
  • Flexport, Inc.
    • Applied Research Scientist Intern, June – September 2021

Education

  • The University of Chicago
    • Ph.D., Management Science and Operations Management
    • MBA – Master of Business Administration
  • University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
    • M.S., Electrical and Computer Engineering
    • B.S., Electrical Engineering

Curriculum Vitae

Zuguang Gao CV (PDF) (available upon request)