Alex Zhang

Biography

Alex is a Principal Scientist in the Business Optimization Lab, focused on developing software and services based on decision sciences and data mining that will bring personalized experiences to individuals and operational efficiencies to the enterprise.

Alex specializes in mathematical modeling and optimization approaches in business analytics. His research interests are in developing practical methods and software tools for solving problems in business performance analysis and optimization, customer behavior modeling, and demand prediction. He has been involved in a variety of projects with HP business divisions in supply chain optimization, data-based customer relationship management (CRM), and IT consolidation. Prior to joining HP, he taught for seven years as assistant professor of Information and Operations Management at the Marshall School of Business at University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA. He graduated with a PhD in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University in 1992.

Research interests

Optimization; Predictive Modeling; Data Mining; eMarketing; Algorithms

Awards

Winner, with colleague Zainab Jamal, of Direct Marketing Educational Foundation (DMEF) 2008 Customer Lifetime Value Modeling competition, Task 2.

Publications

Representative Publications:

Marketing:

Alper Sen, and Alex X. Zhang, Style Goods Pricing with Demand Learning, European Journal of Operational Research, vol. 196 (2009), pp.1058-1075. 

Jamal, Zainab, and Alex Zhang. 2008 DMEF Customer Lifetime Value Competition (Task 2). Journal of Interactive Marketing, Vol. 23 (2009), pp. 279-283.

IT Systems Modeling:

Cherkasova, Lucy, Alex Zhang, Xiaozhou Li. DP+IP = Design of Efficient Backup Scheduling, Accepted by The 6th International Conference on Network and Service Management (CNSM 2010), to be held October 25-29, 2010, Niagara Falls, Canada.

Kai Shen, Alex Zhang, Terence Kelly, and Christopher Stewart, Operational Analysis of Processor Speed Scaling, SPAA 2008: Proceedings of the 20th Annual ACM Symposium on Parallel Algorithms and Architectures, Munich, Germany, June 14-16, 2008.

Christopher Stewart, Terence Kelly, Alex Zhang, Kai Shen. A Dollar from 15 Cents: Cross-Platform Management for Internet Services, USENIX 2008, Boston, MA, June 2008, pp.199-212.

Supply Chain Research:

Zhang, A.X., "Demand Fulfillment Rates in an Assemble-To-Order System with Multiple Products and Dependent Demands," Production and Operations Management, Vol.6, No. 3, pp.309-324, 1997.  This paper is also reprinted in Global Supply Chain and Technology Management, Edited by Hau L. Lee and S.M. Ng and published by the Production and Operations Management Society, 1998.

Scheduling:

Zhang, A.X. and Guu, S.M., "The Multiple Lot Sizing Problem with Rigid Demand and Interrupted Geometric Yield," IIE Transactions, Vol.30, pp.427-431, 1998.