Embedded Files
Sheng Liu
I am an Assistant Professor of Operations Management and Statistics at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. I joined Rotman after obtaining my PhD in Operations Research from Berkeley in 2019 (I took a parental leave in 2022-2023 and am on sabbatical in 2025-2026). Prior to that, I obtained my bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering (focus: statistics and manufacturing analytics) from Tsinghua University in 2014. I grew up in Hunan and have lived in Beijing, West Lafayette, the Bay Area, Chicago, Singapore, and Toronto.
My research focuses on solving operations problems in supply chains, transportation, and logistics systems through data-driven modeling and optimization, integrating tools from operations research, statistics, computing, and machine learning. I have consulted or worked for organizations such as JD.com, Sport Chek, Ninja Van, Hungerhub, Amazon, WHO (Syria), and Lyft. I am fortunate to work on problems with real-world impacts, as recognized by finalists for the INFORMS Daniel H. Wagner Prize and M&SOM Practice-Based Research Competition. More recently, I have been investigating (a) data-driven, sustainable, resilient urban system design, (b) coordination in spatial service systems, including supply chains and logistics, and (c) advanced decision-making tool development for nonprofit organizations serving vulnerable populations. I serve as an associate editor of Transportation Science, a senior editor of Production and Operations Management, and an Editorial Review Board member of Service Science.
Email: sheng.liu[at]rotman.utoronto.ca
Research Interests:
optimization and data analytics, urban operations (particularly mobility and logistics), supply chain management, OM for social good (public-sector OM/OR)
Some Recent Papers (Research Papers for the up-to-date list):
Electrifying Bike-share Systems at Scale, working paper, 2026 (with Alex Jacquillat, Bo Lin)
Traveling Salesman Tardiness, working paper, 2026 (with Haoyue Liu)
The Value of Proxy Information in Location Optimization with Small Data, working paper, 2026 (with Timothy Chan, Rachel Stephenson)
Restaurant Assortment Optimization for (Office) Meal Delivery Platforms (formerly with a less technical title "Menu Optimization for (Office) Meal Delivery Platforms"), under revision, 2024 (with Saman Lagzi, Ningyuan Chen, Pin Gao, Chenhao Wang)
Recommend-to-Match with Random Supply Rejections: Formulation, Approximation, and Analysis, under revision, 2025 (with Haoyue Liu, Mingyao Qi)
Coordinate Package Delivery and On-Demand Rides: A Zoning Policy and Analysis, under revision, 2023 (with Junyu Cao)
Planning Stormwater Retention for Resilience Against Extreme Rainfalls, under revision, 2023 (with Wei Qi, Aiqi Zhang)
Equitable Delivery Zoning for Last-Mile Logistics: A Framework Validated with Implementation, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 2026 (with John Gunnar Carlsson, Stanley Lim, Han Yu)
Inventory Allocation under the Greedy Fulfillment Policy: The (Potential) Perils of the Hindsight Approach, Operations Research, 2026 (with Stefanus Jasin and Jinglong Zhao)
Planning Bike Lanes with Data: Ridership, Congestion, and Path Selection, Management Science, 2025 (with Auyon Siddiq and Jingwei Zhang)
DAOpt: Modeling and Evaluation of Data-Driven Optimization under Uncertainty with LLMs, NeurIPS Workshop MLxOR, 2025 (with Wenzhuo Zhu, Zheng Cui, Wenhan Lu, Yue Zhao)
Pooling and Boosting for Demand Prediction in Retail: A Transfer Learning Approach, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 2024 (with Dazhou Lei, Yongzhi Qi, Hao Hu, Dongyang Geng, Jianshen Zhang, Zuo-Jun Max Shen)
On-Demand Delivery from Stores: Dynamic Dispatching and Routing with Random Demand, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 2023 (with Zhixing Luo)
Provably Good Region Partitioning for On-Time Last-Mile Delivery, Operations Research (Featured Article), 2023 (with John Gunnar Carlsson, Nooshin Salari, Han Yu)
On the Joint Inventory and Pricing Control for a One-Warehouse Multi-Store Problem with Lost Sales: Spiraling Phenomena and a Near-Optimal Heuristic, Operations Research (Featured Article), 2022 (with Yanzhe (Murray) Lei, Stefanus Jasin, Andrew Vakhutinsky)
Urban Bike Lane Planning with Bike Trajectories: Models, Algorithms, and a Real-World Case Study, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 2021 (with Xiang Ji, Zuo-Jun Max Shen)
On-Time Last Mile Delivery: Order Assignment with Travel Time Predictors, Management Science, 2021 (previously Data-Driven Order Assignment for Last Mile Delivery) (with Long He, Zuo-Jun Max Shen)
Featured Recent Awards/Grants:
2026 Petro-Canada Young Innovators Award
2026 CORS Practice Prize, Runner-up
2025 CSAMSE Early-Career Fellow
2025 MSOM Society Award for Responsible Research in OM, Finalist
2024 INFORMS TSL Freight Transportation and Logistics SIG Outstanding Paper Award, Winner
2024 INFORMS Daniel H. Wagner Prize, Finalist
2024 Connaught Community Partnership Research Award
2023 INFORMS PSOR (Public Sector Operations Research) Best Paper Award, Winner
2023 Roger Martin Excellence in Research Award
Google Sites
Report abuse