Biography

Short Bio

Rui Gao is an Associate Professor in the Department of Information, Risk, and Operations Management at McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. His primary research focus is on data-driven decision-making and Artificial Intelligence. He received a Ph.D. in Operations Research from Georgia Institute of Technology, and a B.Sc. in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics from Xi'an Jiaotong University. He currently serves as an Associate Editor for Mathematical Programming and INFORMS Journal on Computing.

Education

• Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2013-2018

  • Ph.D. in Operations Research

  • Advisor: Anton J. Kleywegt

• Xi’an Jiaotong University, School of Mathematics and Statistics, China, 2009-2013

  • B.Sc. in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics (Honors Class)

  • Special Class for the Gifted Young

Professional Employment

• SAS Institute Inc., Advanced Analytics R&D, Raleigh-Durham, NC, 2016

  • Revenue Management and Price Optimization Summer Fellow

Selected Awards

• Runner-up in J-B Wets Junior Researcher Best Paper Prize in Stochastic Programming, 2025

• McCombs School CBA Foundation Research Excellence Award for Assistant Professors, 2024

• Winner in INFORMS Junior Faculty Interest Group (JFIG) Paper Competition, 2020

• Best Paper Award in IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, 2020

• Winner in INFORMS Data Mining Best Paper Award, 2017

• Runner-up in INFORMS Computing Society Student Paper Competition, 2017

• Finalist in INFORMS George E. Nicholson Student Paper Competition, 2016