Please find my research statement.
My research mission is to develop rigorous methodologies to solve a class of problems which I define as Responsible Operations, Analytics, and Design (ROAD). Here, Responsible has a two-pronged meaning. First, these methodologies are developed responsibly, i.e., in an interpretable and trustworthy way. Second, I apply these methodologies to my responsible vision, i.e., toward (1) resilient, (2) circular, and (3) humane supply chain network and economy (SCNE). Currently, these methodologies lie at the intersection of stochastic and contextual optimization, causal inference / empirical methods, and algorithmic/continuous approximation techniques. I am passionate about pursuing this research mission because not only are these problems important to society, but also because I believe there is a tremendous opportunity to solve these important problems by developing novel models and methods that are interesting and impactful.
Papers Under Review and Revision
1. Spin the Bottle Bill: Deposit Refund System Policy and Reverse Supply Chain Design (Job Market Paper)
Austin Saragih, Lara Pontes, Saurabh Amin, Jan Fransoo
R&R, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
🎖Honorable Mention (Third Place), 2025 POMS College of Sustainable Operations Best Student Paper
🎖Finalist(Winner Determined at DSI 2025), 2025 DSI Doctoral Best Student Paper
🎖Finalist(Winner Determined at INFORMS2025), 2025 INFORMS Section on Location Analysis Best Student Paper
🎖Winner (Best Flash Presentation) at the 2025 Early-Career Sustainable Operations Workshop
➤Accepted for Presentation at the 2024 Purdue Operations Conference
2. Regress, Reverse, Recycle: Contextual Stochastic Optimization in Waste Policy and Logistics Network Design
Austin Saragih, Milena Janjevic, Yossi Sheffi, Jan Fransoo
R&R, Production and Operations ManagementÂ
➤Accepted for Presentation at the 2024 Purdue Operations Conference
3. SCGraph: A Dependency-Free Python Package for Road, Rail, and Ocean Shortest Path Generation and Distance Estimation
Connor Makowski, Austin Saragih, Willem Guter, Tim Russell, Arne Heinold, Spyros Lekkakos
Under Review, INFORMS Journal on Computing [Code]
🎖Winner, 2025 MIT Prize for Open Data
4. Pivotal Uncertainties to Resolve: Optimal Information Gathering in Supply Chain Design
Austin Saragih, Milena Janjevic, Matthias Winkenbach, Gilberto Montibeller
Under Major Revision, European Journal of Operational Research
➤Accepted for Presentation at the 2024 Iowa FutureBAProf Workshop
➤Accepted for Presentation at the 2023 and 2024 MSOM Conference
➤Accepted for Presentation at the 2023 Purdue Operations Conference
Working Papers
1. Emergency Management Cycle for Disaster Relief: Mitigation, Preparedness, and Response Design
Austin Saragih, Shabnam Rezapour, Reza Zanjirani Farahani, Alfonso Pedraza-Martinez
➤Accepted for Presentationat the 2025 Purdue Operations Conference
➤Accepted for Presentationat the 2025 Notre Dame Humanitatian Operations (HOPE) Workshop
2. Real Options for Systemic Resilience: Experimental Analysis of Process Flexibility Design
Austin Saragih, Milena Janjevic, Jarrod Goentzel, Yossi Sheffi
3. Watt About Outages: The Marginal Value of Storage on Energy Distribution Networks Under Risk of Disruption
Nathan Engelman-Lado, Austin Saragih, Saurabh Amin
Published Papers
1. Saragih, A., Janjevic, M., Winkenbach, M. (2024). Revitalizing municipal solid waste recycling: Review of current U.S. policies and potential directions for the circular economy. MIT Science Policy Review, 5, 50-57. 10.38105/spr.5rbiekp17o [Paper]
2. Thais, S., Shumway, H., Saragih, A. (2023). Algorithmic bias: Looking beyond data bias to ensure algorithmic accountability and equity. MIT Science Policy Review, 4, 59-66. 10.38105/spr.5lwvw66ssy [Paper]
Managerial Articles
1. Saragih, A., & Ahmed, S. (2022). E-B2B distribution strategies for fragmented retail environments: Saving India’s mom-and-pop stores. Supply Chain Management Review [Paper]
