I am a fifth-year PhD student in Operations Management at Booth School of Business, University of Chicago. I am very fortunate to be co-advised by Prof. Linwei Xin and Prof. Will Ma. Previously, I received a B.S. in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics from Zhejiang University. My research develops scalable learning and optimization methods for operational decision-making, with applications in supply chain management and resource allocation. Combining theory with practical deployment, I study how operational structure can improve AI methods at scale, how to learn effectively over long horizons, and when simple models and policies are sufficient. I am excited to explore how AI reshapes operational systems and how we can guide its application to operational problems while preserving interpretability and providing managerial insights. I am on the 2026-2027 academic job market! Email: yaqi.xie@chicagobooth.edu [CV] [Google Scholar]

Research

• Fast Horizon-Free Rates for Inventory Optimization
  Yaqi Xie, Will Ma, Linwei Xin
  Submitted to Operations Research

• DeepStock: Reinforcement Learning with Policy Regularizations for Inventory Management [Slides]
  Yaqi Xie, Xinru Hao, Jiaxi Liu, Will Ma, Linwei Xin, Lei Cao, Yidong Zhang
  INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics, 2026
  

  • Finalist for the INFORMS 2025 Daniel H. Wagner Prize
    

  • Covered in Alibaba Taobao & Tmall Press Release and Columbia Business Insights, 2026

  • 4-page preliminary version appeared at NeurIPS 2025 MLxOR Workshop

• VC Theory for Inventory Policies [Slides]
  Yaqi Xie, Will Ma, Linwei Xin
  Major Revision in Management Science
  

  • Finalist for the INFORMS 2025 APS Best Student Paper Prize

  • Selected for presentation in the MSOM 2024 Supply Chain Management SIG

• The Benefits of Delay to Online Decision-Making [Slides]
  Yaqi Xie, Will Ma, Linwei Xin
  Management Science, 2025
  

  • Selected for presentation in the MSOM 2023 Supply Chain Management SIG

  • Covered in Chicago Booth Review, 2023

• Dynamic Seat Selection Surcharge and Allocation Policy in Selling High-Speed Train Tickets
  Yaqi Xie, Zizhuo Wang
  Production and Operations Management, 2025
  

Teaching

Booth School of Business, Teaching Assistant:

• Operations Management (MBA), Winter 2025
  

• Supply Chain Management (Undergraduate), Winter 2025
  

• Linear Programming (PhD), Fall 2023