The 3rd Workshop on Empirical Operations Management

at National University of Singapore

Time and Venue

January 8, 2026 - January 9, 2026

NUS Business School

Agenda

8th of January 2026

8:30-9:00: Check in & Coffee
9:00-9:15: Opening remark
9:15-10:45: Session 1: Healthcare Operations

The Effects of Precision Medicine Innovation in a Competitive Drug Market: Evidence from Oncology Drugs

Speaker: Anant Mishra, Director of Research and Professor of Supply Chain at the College of Business & Management, VinUniversity, Vietnam

Reducing Prescription Errors Through Information Intervention: A Field Experiment in Healthcare Operations

Speaker: Xiaodan Shao, PhD Student in Operations Management at Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

10:45-11:00: Break
11:00-12:30: Session 2: OM for Social Good

State Mandated Employment Certificate for Minors Reduces Child Labor Violations in the United States

Speaker: Ashish Kabra, Assistant Professor at Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

From First Order to Habit: The Role of Voucher & Referral Programs in a Food-Rescue Platform

Speaker: Wu Hao, PhD Student in Analytics and Operations at NUS Business School, National University of Singapore, Singapore

12:30-14:00: Lunch
14:00-15:30: Session 3: Machine Learning for Social Good

Reuniting Forcibly Separated Families Through Shared Memories with Machine Learning

Speaker: Huifeng Su, PhD Student in Operations at Yale School of Management, Yale University, United States

Improving Access to Essential Medicines in Sierra Leone via Decision-Aware Machine Learning

Speaker: Tsai-Hsuan (Angel) Chung, PhD student in Operations, Information, and Decisions at Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, United States

15:30-16:00: Coffee
16:00-17:30: Session 4: Experimental Evidence in AI

AI Self-preferencing in Algorithmic Hiring: Empirical Evidence and Insights

Speaker: Jiannan Xu, PhD Student in Operations Management at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, United States

Generative Search: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment

Speaker: Yuting Zhu, Assistant Professor of Marketing at NUS Business School, National University of Singapore, Singapore

17:30-18:30: Keynote by Professor Yanchong (Karen) Zheng
18:30-21:30: Dinner

9th of January 2026

9:00-10:30: Session 5: Platform Operations

Rewarded Ads in Freemium Apps: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Speaker: Xiao Lei, Assistant Professor at HKU Business School, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Balancing Efficiency and Consumer Experience: An Investigation of Gig vs. Traditional Customer Support

Speaker: Qiaowen Guo, PhD Student in Supply Chain, Operations, and Technology at Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis, United States

10:30-11:00: Coffee
11:00-12:30: Session 6: Supply Chain Management

Cost Shocks and Production Reorganization: Evidence from the Goods and Services Tax Reform in India

Speaker: Kashish Arora, Assistant Professor of Decisions, Operations, and Technology at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Business School, Hong Kong

What Drives Innovation Collaboration? Insights from Supply Chain and Ownership Networks

Speaker: Hanyi Tao, Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship and Management at Shanghaitech University, China

Travel and Hotel

Participants will need to plan and pay for their own travel. We recommend the following hotels located near the campus. Please make your own hotel reservations based on your preferences and budget.

Park Avenue Rochester - To book: Click here to Book*
Citadines Connect Rochester Singapore - To book: Click here to book**
Citadines Science Park Singapore - To book: Click here to Book**

*For Park Avenue, corporate code will be automatically applied.
**For Citadines, kindly key in the corporate code "NUSXDAO2026" to the Promotion Column.

Sponsorship

NUS Business School

Keynote

Professor Yanchong (Karen) Zheng is the George M. Bunker Professor of Management and an Associate Professor of Operations Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Her research focuses on two general topics: (I) the design of incentives, technologies, and behavioral interventions to enhance efficiency, welfare, and sustainability in food and agriculture systems, with a focus on smallholder value chains; and (II) the role of information transparency in driving environmentally and socially responsible behaviors. In her research, Zheng employs a behavior-centric, data-driven, field-based approach to enable the design of empirically-grounded and practically implementable solutions.

Zheng collaborates with both public and private partners on the ground to ensure that her research leads to positive impacts to society and practice. For example, through a collaboration with the state government of Karnataka, India, her research team has designed and implemented a new two-stage auction on its state-wide online agricultural platform for a major market of lentils. The implementation has led to significant profit gains in the market for over 10,000 farmers during the treatment period. Currently, her team is collaborating with the 2030 Water Resources Group, World Bank, to design effective incentive systems for scaling long-term adoption of sustainable agricultural practices among smallholders in Uttar Pradesh, India through the UP Accelerator Program.