Irene Lo

I am an assistant professor in the department of Management Science & Engineering at Stanford University. I conduct research at the intersection of algorithms and economic theory to design matching markets and assignment processes, with a focus on improving efficiency and equity in non-profit applications. I am especially interested in resource allocation in education, the environment, and the developing world. I lead the Stanford Impact Lab on Equitable Access to Education, was one of the program chairs for the 1st ACM Conference on Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms, and Optimization (EAAMO '21), and was a co-organizer of the Mechanism Design for Social Good (MD4SG) research initiative. 

I am honored to be affiliated with the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, the Stanford Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, the Stanford Golub Capital Social Impact Lab, the Stanford King Center for Global Development, the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, as well as the Stanford Center for Ocean Solutions. I was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the economics department at Stanford University, supervised by Al Roth. I obtained my Ph.D. in operations research from Columbia University in 2018, under the supervision of Jay Sethuraman and Jacob Leshno, and graduated from Princeton University in 2013 with an A.B. in mathematics.

You can contact me at ilo [at] stanford [dot] edu.

Students

Spring office hours: 

Ph.D. Students

Recent News

April 2024: Our paper "Commitment on Volunteer Crowdsourcing Platforms: Implications for Growth and Engagement" (with Vahideh Manshadi, Scott Rodilitz & Ali Shameli) is accepted at Manufacturing & Service Operations Management.

February 2024: Excited to co-organize a Rising Stars Workshop with the Stanford MS&E DE&I committee to celebrate exceptional young scholars and support diversity across the interdisciplinary fields represented by MS&E.

January 2024: Excited to present our paper "Designing School Choice for Diversity in the San Francisco Unified School District" (with Max Allman, Itai Ashlagi, Juliette Love, Katherine Mentzer, Henry O'Connell & Lulabel Ruiz-Setz) at the IPAM workshop on Mathematical Foundations for Equity in Transportation Systems.

October 2023: Our paper "Overbooking with Priority-Respecting Reassignment" (with Itai Ashlagi, Andrei Graur, and Kaleigh Mentzer) was presented at the 3rd ACM Conference on Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms, and Optimization (EAAMO'23).

September 2023: Grateful that our ongoing work with the San Francisco Unified School District to redesign their student assignment system was featured in the Stanford Impact Labs Open Questions Forum