Leann Thayaparan, PhD, MBA

Leann Thayaparan joined the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School as an assistant professor in Fall 2024. She received a PhD in Operations Research and a Master’s in Business Analytics from MIT. Her research interests focus on on the intersection of operations management, optimization and machine learning in the area of sustainability. By developing new algorithms for practice, she advances knowledge of how machine learning can be used to make optimal decisions with a specific focus on social good.

Education

• PhD, Operations Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• MBA, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• BSE, Operations Research and Financial Engineering, Princeton University

Research

• "COVID-19: Prediction, Prevalence, and the Operations of Vaccine Allocation" (with Georgia Perakis et al.), Manufacturing & Service Operations Management 25.3: 1013-1032., 2023
• "The Role of Optimization in Some Recent Advances in Data-Driven Decision-Making" (with Georgia Perakis et al.), Mathematical Programming: 1-35., 2023
• "COVID-19: A multiwave SIR-based model for learning waves" (with Georgia Perakis, Divya Singhvi and Omar Skali Lami), Production and Operations Management 32 (5) 1471-1489., 2023
• "Evaluation of individual and ensemble probabilistic forecasts of COVID-19 mortality in the US" (with Estee Y Cramer et al.), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119.15., 2022

Working Papers

• "The role of electric vehicle driver behavior in moving to zero emissions" with Georgia Perakis
• "UMOTEM: Upper bounding method for optimizing over tree ensemble models" with Georgia Perakis
• "The (Battery) Price is Right: Modeling the price/capacity trade off for stationary storage" with Georgia Perakis

Teaching

Current

• Data Analytics

Honors and Distinctions

• POMS College of Sustainable Operations Student Paper Competition 2024 (second place)
• MSOM Student Paper Competition 2023 (honorary mention)
• MIT's ORC Best Student Paper Award 2023 (winner)
• POMS College of Supply Chain Management Best Student Paper Competition 2023 (honorary mention)
• Jeff McGill Student Paper Award 2022 (finalist)
• Service Science Best Student Paper Award 2021 (second place)
• ICSS Best Conference Paper Award 2021 (winner)
• Doing Good with Good OR Competition 2021 (finalist)
• Public Sector Operations Research Best Paper Competition 2021 (finalist)