Lavanya Marla

Marla is an Associate Professor in Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests are in robust and dynamic decision-making for large-scale networks subject to operating stochasticity. Her research builds advanced resource allocation tools for these systems by bridging aspects of data-driven optimization, statistics, simulation, and artificial intelligence. Application areas of interest include aviation planning, operations and pricing; logistics, emergency medical services, and shared transportation systems. Prior to the University of Illinois, she was a Systems Scientist with the Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University. She earned her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras.

Her work has been recognized through multiple awards including the prestigious Center for Advanced Study award from the University of Illinois, IISE Outstanding Innovation in Service Systems award, a semi-finalist at the INFORMS Innovative Applications in Analytics Award, Honorable mention for the Anna Valicek award from AGIFORS, KDD Startup Research award, and multiple best paper awards. Her research is funded by grants from the US National Science Foundation, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Transportation, the US-India Educational Foundation, and multiple industry grants. 

For more information please click here.