Robust optimization
Distributionally robust optimization, risk management, and target-based decision making under uncertainty.
HKUST · Industrial Engineering & Decision Analytics
Jin Qi 戚瑾
Associate Professor
Associate Director, Center for Aging Science
I study how to make better decisions under uncertainty, with a focus on robust optimization, healthcare operations, and transportation.
I joined the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2015 and became an Associate Professor in 2021. I received my PhD from the National University of Singapore, and my master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Tsinghua University. My work connects optimization methods with operational challenges in practice, including collaborations with hospitals in Hong Kong, Singapore, and mainland China.
About
Academic experience
Appointments
- 2021–present
Associate Professor
Industrial Engineering and Decision Analytics, HKUST
- 2015–2021
Assistant Professor
Industrial Engineering and Decision Analytics, HKUST
- 2014–2015
Research Assistant Professor
Decision Analytics and Operations, City University of Hong Kong
Education
- 2014
PhD in Management Science
National University of Singapore
- 2010
MSc in Management Science and Engineering
Tsinghua University
- 2006
BEng in Mechanical Engineering and Automation
Tsinghua University · With honours
Affiliations
- 2020–present
Associate Director, Center for Aging Science
HKUST
- 2024–present
Faculty Associate, Li & Fung Supply Chain Institute
HKUST
- 2025–present
Faculty Associate, Otto Poon Center for Climate Resilience and Sustainability
HKUST
Research
Decisions under uncertainty.
From mathematical foundations
to real-world operations.
Healthcare operations
Appointment systems, elective surgery scheduling, and hospital admission planning.
Transportation & supply chains
Routing, ride-sourcing, inventory decisions, and project management.
Related methods Machine learning · Game theory
Research grants ↓Publications
Selected & recent work
† Alphabetical order, equal contribution.* PhD student or post-doc at the time of initiation.
The passenger waiting behavior with sunk waiting time: an empirical study in ride-sourcing market
accepted by Production and Operations Management
Robust service network design under travel time uncertainty: Formulations and exact solutions
accepted by INFORMS Journal on Computing
- †
Distributionally robust group testing with correlation information
Management Science, articles in advance
Analyzing network formation using big data analytics: A study of degree distribution, clustering coefficient, diameter, and assortativity
Management Science, articles in advance
- †
Robust pricing with asymmetric distributional information in valuation
Production and Operations Management, 35(5): 1901-1922, 2026
Distributionally robust optimization for minimizing price fluctuations in quota system
Transportation Research Part E, 193, 103812, 2025
- †
Elective surgery sequencing and scheduling under uncertainty
Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, 26(3): 893-910, 2024
More publications (10)
- †
Supermodularity in two-stage distributionally robust optimization
Management Science, 70(3): 1394-1409, 2024
- †
The inventory routing problem under uncertainty
Operations Research, 71(1): 378-395, 2023
- †
Preservation of supermodularity in parametric optimization: Necessary and sufficient conditions on constraint structures
Operations Research, 69(1): 1-12, 2021
Mitigating delays and unfairness in appointment systems
Management Science, 63(2): 566-583, 2017
- †
Preferences for travel time under risk and ambiguity: Implications in path selection and network equilibrium
Transportation Research Part B, 94: 264-284, 2016
- †
Routing optimization under uncertainty
Operations Research, 64(1): 186-200, 2016
A robust optimization model for managing elective admission in hospital
Operations Research, 63(6): 1452-1467, 2015
- †
Managing underperformance risk in project portfolio selection
Operations Research, 63(3): 660-675, 2015
- †
Distributionally robust discrete optimization with Entropic Value-at-Risk
Operations Research Letters, 42(8): 532-538, 2014
Fragility Index: A new approach for binary classification
Proceedings of the 29th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, 2918-2929, 2023
Working papers & manuscripts under review (8)
- †
Fragility-aware Classification for Understanding Risk and Improving Generalization
under major revision at Management Science
- †
Asymptotically optimal distributionally robust solutions through forecasting and operations decentralization
under major revision at Operations Research
- †
Strategic analysis of travel restriction policies during a pandemic
under major revision at Manufacturing and Service Operations Management
- †
A cost-agnostic model for infrastructure planning in sustainable water development
under major revision at Naval Research Logistics
- †
Fairness and competition in supply chain
under review
- †
Project monitoring and control systems
under review
Surgery scheduling under downstream ICU risks: A feature-driven robust optimization approach
under review
- †
Connecting extreme-point generation and decision rules in two-stage distributionally robust optimization
under review
Media
Go with the flow to fix health woes
The Standard (HK), March 2019
Publication details and manuscript statuses follow the August 2026 CV.
Funding
Research grants
- 2026–2028
Climate-Adaptive Healthcare Operations: Integrating Artificial Intelligence and Robust Optimization for Urban Resilience
- 2026–2028
Enhancing classification robustness through satisficing framework
- 2025–2027
Robust Optimization
- 2025–2027
Project monitoring and control under uncertainty
- 2024–2026
Two-stage distributionally robust optimization with binary decisions
Further grants & collaborative projects
- 2022–2025
Distributionally robust auction design
- 2020–2022
Data-driven task assignment under uncertainty
- 2019–2022
Improving healthcare delivery service in Hong Kong
- 2019–2021
Dynamic appointment scheduling with waiting time targets
- 2018–2020
Distributionally robust and risk-averse inventory routing under demand uncertainty
- 2017–2020
Data-driven operating room scheduling in public hospitals
- 2016–2021
Can fairness survive in competition in supply chain?
- 2015–2023
Start-up Fund
- 2025–2028
Algorithmic bias, economic efficiency, and social welfare
- 2024–2029
Enhancing Hong Kong’s role in sustainable supply chain finance via technology transformation
- 2022–2024
Robust infrastructure planning for sustainable water development in the Greater Bay Area under demand uncertainty and climate variability
- 2021–2024
Mitigation strategies and operations in confronting novel infectious disease
- 2025–2027
Assortment and pricing optimization with customer-centric fairness
- 2020–2023
The role of supermodularity in robust optimization: Theory and its application in supply chain management
- 2014–2019
Delivering 21st century healthcare in Hong Kong – Building a quality-and-efficiency driven system
People
Research group
Students, postdoctoral fellows & alumni
As of August 2026
8 current students2 postdoctoral fellows
PhD students
6Zhuogen Wu
PhD student · 2026–present
Yuxin Hong
PhD student · 2026–present
Kaiwen Lin
PhD student · 2026–present
Anh Quan Nguyen
PhD student · 2025–present
Yuhao Yan
PhD student · 2024–present
Tong Lu
PhD student · 2022–present
Hong Kong PhD Fellowship
MPhil students
2Xinyi Zhang
MPhil student · 2025–present
Anjun Zhang
MPhil student · 2025–present
Postdoctoral fellows
2Danni Xu
Postdoctoral fellow · 2026–present
Yuhan Liu
Postdoctoral fellow · 2025–present
PhD graduates
9| Name | Years | Position as of August 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Yihua HeCo-advised with Qian Liu | 2021–2026 | Assistant Professor, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics |
| Chen YangHong Kong PhD Fellowship | 2020–2025 | Assistant Professor, Zhejiang University |
| Yuhan LiuCo-advised with Hai Yang | 2021–2025 | Postdoctoral fellow, HKUST |
| Jun WangCo-advised with Hai Yang | 2021–2025 | Lecturer, Zhejiang Wanli University |
| Nana LiCo-advised with Xiangtong Qi | 2020–2023 | Researcher, Chinese Academy of Sciences |
| Guodong HeCo-advised with Qian Liu | 2019–2023 | Algorithm Engineer, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. |
| Xiaojin FuCo-advised with Ying-Ju Chen | 2017–2020 | Researcher, Huawei Noah’s Ark Lab |
| Hao LiCo-advised with Ying-Ju Chen | 2016–2019 | Assistant Professor, University of Science and Technology of China |
| Ho Tak TseungCo-advised with Ho-yin Mak and Ying-Ju Chen | 2014–2017 | Lecturer, Hong Kong Polytechnic University |
MPhil graduates
5Anh Quan NguyenMPhil · 2023–2025
Yuhao YanMPhil · 2022–2024
Ho Yin WanMPhil · 2021–2023
Wing Hei SumMPhil · 2019–2021
Lingyi PanMPhil · 2017–2019
Former postdoctoral fellows
2| Name | Years | Position as of August 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Zheng CuiExcellent Young Scholars (overseas) | 2020–2021 | Assistant Professor, Zhejiang University |
| Yang Zhan | 2019–2020 | Assistant Professor, Nanjing University |
Teaching
Courses at HKUST
- GH2506Emerging Technologies for Global Health (Part 3)Spring 2026
- IEDA3010Prescriptive Analytics2018–2026
- IEDA3230Engineering Economics and Accounting2022–2026
- EEMT5510Engineering Economics and Cost Management2021–2026
- IEDA3901Transportation Systems2016–2019, 2021–2022
- IELM2410Logistics and Freight Transportation Operations2017
Recognition
Honors & awards
- 2026Finalist, POMS College of Healthcare Operations Management Best Paper Award
- 2025Honoree, HKUST Faculty Recognition Ceremony
- 2025Gold Medals with Congratulations of the Jury (Gold +), 50th International Exhibition of Inventions Geneva (IEIG)
- 2025POMS-HK Meritorious Service Award
- 2024Excellent Young Scholars, NSFC
- 2023MSOM Meritorious Service Award
- 2022First Prize, CSAMSE Best Paper Award
- 2021Finalist, MSOM Best Operations Management Paper in Operations Research
- 2014, 2020Second Place, POMS-HK Best Student Paper Competition
- 2012President’s Graduate Fellowship, National University of Singapore
- 2006Outstanding Graduate, Tsinghua University
- 2006Outstanding Student Leader, Tsinghua University
- 2005Team Champion, National College Students Service Rifle Tournament (team member)
- 2002First Prize, National Mathematics Olympiad, China