Research

My research interests lie broadly in sequential decision-making under uncertainty, including online learning, reinforcement learning, and resource allocation, with applications to experimentation, supply chain management and revenue management.

  • Methodologically, beyond merely focusing on maximizing short-term efficiency, my research delves into the safety, robustness, and resilience of AI-assisted decision-making systems, promoting long-term efficiency through managing hidden risk:
    • enhancing policy safety and robustness during and after online experiments [1, 5, 6] — our results provide theoretical insights to the practical success of AlphaGo MCTS;
    • risk detection, response coordination, and system recovery for supply chain disruptions [3, 7] — our results showcase the approriate approach of handling uncertain disruption predictions.
  • Practically, I have strong interests in applying my research philosophy into supply chains and finance.
    • I have been working with several large companies (AccentureDENSOFord) to help design and implement supply chain risk detection models and mitigation strategies. In Summer 2023, I spent a great time working on inventory simulation and optimization as a data science intern at Ford.
    • In Summer 2025, I spent a great time working on developing trading strategies as a quantitative research intern at Citadel LLC.

Publications, Preprints, Articles (*represents α-β order)

  1. Adaptive Variance Inflation in Thompson Sampling: Efficiency, Safety, Robustness, and Beyond. Feng Zhu, David Simchi-Levi
    • Accepted by NeurIPS 2025
    • A compact version of [1, 5, 6] is recognized as
      • Honorable Mention, INFORMS George Nicholson Student Paper Competition (2025)
      • Finalist, INFORMS Jeff McGill Student Paper Award (2025)
  2. Risk Detection, Response Coordination, and System Recovery under Uncertain Time-To-Recover. Pengfeng Shu*, David Simchi-Levi*, Chung-Piaw Teo*, Feng Zhu*
    • Submitted
    • Accepted by MSOM 2025 Supply Chain Management SIG
  3. Dynamic Service Fee Pricing under Strategic Behavior: Actions as Instruments and Phase Transition. Rui Ai*, David Simchi-Levi*, Feng Zhu*
  4. Online Resource Allocation with Average Budget ConstraintsRuicheng Ao*, Hongyu Chen*, David Simchi-Levi*, Feng Zhu*
    • Under revision
    • Finalist, INFORMS Jeff McGill Student Paper Award (2024) [Entrant: Feng Zhu]
  5. Regret Distribution in Stochastic Bandits: Optimal Trade-off between Expectation and Tail Risk. David Simchi-Levi*, Zeyu Zheng*, Feng Zhu*
    • Under revision
    • Preliminary version appeared in NeurIPS 2023 Spotlight (top 3%)
    • Finalist, POMS-HK Best Student Paper Competition (2024)
  6. A Simple and Optimal Policy Design with Safety against Heavy-Tailed Risk for Stochastic Bandits. David Simchi-Levi*, Zeyu Zheng*, Feng Zhu*
  7. Fixing the U.S. Semiconductor Supply Chain. David Simchi-Levi, Feng Zhu, Matthew Loy
    • Published in Harvard Business Review
  8. On Greedy-like Policies in Online Matching with Reusable Network Resources and Decaying Rewards. David Simchi-Levi*, Zeyu Zheng*, Feng Zhu*
    • Published in Management Science
  9. Offline Planning and Online Learning under Recovering Rewards. David Simchi-Levi*, Zeyu Zheng*, Feng Zhu*
  10. Dynamic Pricing in a Non-stationary Growing Environment. Feng Zhu, Zeyu Zheng
  11. Assign-to-Seat: Dynamic Capacity Control for Selling High-Speed Train Tickets. Feng Zhu, Shaoxuan Liu, Rowan Wang and Zizhuo Wang
    • Published in Manufacturing & Service Operations Management