{"519781":{"#nid":"519781","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Student Spotlight: Q\u0026A with ISyE Student Chenxi Zeng, Research Scientist at Amazon Web Services","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EChenxi Zeng is a current Ph.D. student at the Stewart School of Industrial \u0026amp; Systems Engineering (ISyE). He is graduating this May and will be continuing his work in Seattle, WA, as a research scientist for Amazon Web Services (AWS). He received the Georgia Tech Research and Innovation Conference (GTRIC) fellowship for his dissertation, in the amount of $5,000, as well as the 2015 Doing Good with Good OR Award at INFORMS.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EI recently sat down with Zeng to ask him about his research focus and his work with Amazon.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EWhat is your educational background, prior to coming to Georgia Tech?\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EI\u2019ve earned a bachelor\u2019s in mathematics at Xi\u2019an Jiaotong University in China, and a master\u2019s degree in computer science at the University of Texas at Dallas.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EWhy did you choose Georgia Tech, and ISyE, for your graduate studies?\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGeorgia Tech is an excellent engineering school. In particular, ISyE is not only the largest industrial engineering program in the nation, but it also has many outstanding researchers. I was interested in mathematical modeling and optimization, and I believed I could strengthen my knowledge of operations research and contribute my talents here.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EGive an overview of your dissertation, and why you focused on this area for it.\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EMy dissertation stemmed from a collaboration between ISyE and the American Red Cross (ARC) back in 2012. Assistant Professor Turgay Ayer and Professor Chelsea White, ISyE Schneider National Chair in Transportation and Logistics, determined that ARC potentially benefit from a significant cost-savings if we could convince ARC to change their cryo \u2013 a key blood product \u2013 collection policies.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESince then, we\u2019ve found very interesting theoretical results (structural policy), provided extensive numerical results, and delivered a decision support tool (DST). My dissertation \u2013 and our paper on this work \u2013show that our innovative blood collection method can save up to 70 percent of the cost due to cryo collection, and our DST has been implemented.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWe found that due to the tight time constraint necessary for making cryo, the ARC spent a lot of money in transporting whole blood product. We improved the cryo collection policies by taking the advantage of the backhaul in the blood collection. We built a Markov Decision Processes model to generate decision support and analyze the societal impact.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EWhat was it like to win the GTRIC fellowship for your work on cryo collection?\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EI presented preliminary results of the ARC cryo collection at the GTRIC in 2013 and won the GTRIC fellowship. I want to thank Georgia Tech for providing me with this excellent opportunity. This experience gave me more confidence to dive deeply into the research.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EFollowing on the heels of the GTRIC fellowship, what was it like to win the 2015 Doing Good with Good OR Award at INFORMS? What did this tell you about the importance of your work?\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIt is a great honor. This is a nice result of our three-year industry-academia collaboration. I want to express my highest gratitude to the people who are actively involved: Professor White, Professor Ayer, Professor Vengazhiyil, and Can Zhang, another Ph.D. student in ISyE. There is no doubt that we\u2019ve been doing meaningful work, and we will continue to work with ARC to improve their blood collection policies.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EEven though you\u2019re graduating this semester, you\u2019re already working full-time for Amazon Web Services as a research scientist. Could you describe what you do as a research scientist, and how you got connected to your current position?\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAmazon is growing very fast \u2014 especially my division, AWS. There are quite a few operations research scientist positions in Amazon, and I was referred by my colleague, who is also a Yellow Jacket.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EMy typical work includes analyzing data, building mathematical models, and providing decision support. I work with Amazon\u2019s business people and software engineers to optimize the cloud computing\u2019s supply chain.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EWhat is one of the most challenging projects you\u2019ve worked on for Amazon?\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBusiness problems are often poorly defined, and the raw data is very messy. I must spend considerable time learning the domain knowledge from the stakeholders, then spend some time familiarizing myself with the data \u2013 then clean it up. Sometimes, I must make a trade-off between optimality and complexity to deliver results in a timely manner.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EWhat do you bring to Amazon as a Ph.D. in ISyE that you might not otherwise be able to contribute?\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThere are quite a few Yellow Jackets at Amazon! I think as a Ph.D. in ISyE, I contribute my expertise in operations research as follows:\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E1. Think about the business problem holistically, and possibly propose a new prototype.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E2. Use up-to-date technology to solve the problem and provide better decision support.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E3. Similar to what a project manager does, work with business people and developers to implement a better method and make an impact on the business\u003Cem\u003E.\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EWhat do you like to do in your free time?\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EI love to work out. I went to the Campus Recreation Center almost every day at Georgia Tech. Living in the Northwest, I now like hiking. I also like to cook, making healthy food for myself. I love magic tricks.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EWhat, if any, are your post-graduation plans?\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EI will continue to learn new things, work hard, and make an impact in my company.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EChenxi Zeng is a current Ph.D. student at the Stewart School of Industrial \u0026amp; Systems Engineering (ISyE). He is graduating this May and will be continuing his work in Seattle, WA, as a research scientist for Amazon Web Services (AWS). He received the Georgia Tech Research and Innovation Conference (GTRIC) fellowship for his dissertation, as well as the 2015 Doing Good with Good OR Award at INFORMS.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"ISyE Ph.D. student Chenxi Zeng is working for Amazon Web Services as a research scientist."}],"uid":"28766","created_gmt":"2016-03-31 10:07:15","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:21:14","author":"Shelley Wunder-Smith","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2016-03-31T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2016-03-31T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"519761":{"id":"519761","type":"image","title":"Chenxi Zeng, ISyE Ph.D. Student","body":null,"created":"1459515600","gmt_created":"2016-04-01 13:00:00","changed":"1475895286","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:54:46","alt":"Chenxi Zeng, ISyE Ph.D. Student","file":{"fid":"205272","name":"chenxi_zeng_headshot_crop.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/chenxi_zeng_headshot_crop_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/chenxi_zeng_headshot_crop_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":894842,"path_740":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/chenxi_zeng_headshot_crop_0.jpg?itok=7Io-J9pB"}},"519771":{"id":"519771","type":"image","title":"Chenxi Zeng with Robin Keller, 2015 INFORMS president","body":null,"created":"1459515600","gmt_created":"2016-04-01 13:00:00","changed":"1475895286","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:54:46","alt":"Chenxi Zeng with Robin Keller, 2015 INFORMS president","file":{"fid":"205273","name":"robin_keller_with_chenxi_zeng.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/robin_keller_with_chenxi_zeng_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/robin_keller_with_chenxi_zeng_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":435197,"path_740":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/robin_keller_with_chenxi_zeng_0.jpg?itok=UDoOcOD6"}}},"media_ids":["519761","519771"],"groups":[{"id":"1242","name":"School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISYE)"}],"categories":[{"id":"8862","name":"Student Research"},{"id":"145","name":"Engineering"}],"keywords":[{"id":"14855","name":"american red cross"},{"id":"170058","name":"Chenxi Zeng"},{"id":"6204","name":"INFORMS"},{"id":"426","name":"isye"},{"id":"564","name":"operations research"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39431","name":"Data Engineering and Science"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:shelley.wunder-smith@isye.gatech.edu\u0022\u003EShelley Wunder-Smith\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWriter\/Editor\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EStewart School of Industrial \u0026amp; Systems Engineering\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E404.385.4745\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["shelley.wunder-smith@isye.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}