Academic Appointments
2022–present: Associate Professor, Department of Industrial Engineering, Tsinghua University.
2017-2022: Assistant Professor and (Tenured) Associate Professor in Operations Management at the Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University.
2016-2022: Postdoc Fellow and Strategic Advisor, China Energy Group, Energy Analysis and Environmental Impacts Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Education
PhD, IEOR, UC Berkeley.
MS, Process Systems Engineering, UCLA.
BS, Chu Kochen College and Automation, Zhejiang University.
Research Interests
Smart-city operations:
· Climate-resilient cities (e.g., seawater intrusion prevention, planning against extreme rainfalls)
· Agile and autonomous logistics (e.g., autonomous mobile stores, last-mile crowdshipping, online facility location)
· Energy, mobility, and their citywide synergy (e.g., energy storage, battery swapping, shared autonomous electric vehicles）
· Sharing economy (e.g., vehicle sharing, energy omni-sharing)
For Prospective Students
Please send an email to me if you are interested in working with me as an undergrad student, a PhD student, or a postdoc researcher.
Biography
Wei Qi is a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering at Tsinghua University. He is also an adjunct professor in operations management at the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University, where he was a tenured associate professor. He also served as Strategic Advisor of the China Energy Group, Energy Analysis, and Environmental Impacts Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. His research has contributed to smart-city operations concerning urban energy, mobility, retail logistics, and climate adaptation. The National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and the Fonds de Recherche du Québec (FRQ) have supported his research. The outcomes of his research have appeared in journals and proceedings including Operations Research, Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, IEEE Transactions in Power Systems, and Neurips. Wei earned a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, an M.S. from UCLA, and a B.E. from Zhejiang University, China.
Wei received academic awards including INFORMS SOLA Chuck ReVelle Rising Star Award, INFORMS ENRE Best Publication Award in Energy, INFORMS TSL Best Paper Award, etc. Joint work with students received recognition, such as being a finalist for the 2023 INFORMS Undergraduate Research Prize. As a recognition of his teaching efforts, he received the 2020 Distinguished Teaching Award from the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University.
Here are Wei's Google Scholar Profile, and website in Chinese.
Publications
Operations Research / Operations Management：
Storing the Wind:
Joint Planning of Energy Storage and Transmission for Wind Energy Generation.
Wei Qi, Yong Liang and Zuo-Jun Max Shen.
Operations Research, 63.6 (2015): 1280-1293.
Last-Mile Crowdshipping:
Shared Mobility for Last-Mile Delivery: Design, Operational Prescriptions and Environmental Impact.
Wei Qi, Lefei Li, Sheng Liu and Zuo-Jun Max Shen.
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 20.4 (2018): 737-751.
Among top 15 most downloaded papers in 2019, M&SOM.
[MSOM Review Blog]
A Vision:
A Smart-City Scope of Operations Management.
Wei Qi and Zuo-Jun Max Shen.
Production and Operations Management, 28.2 (2019): 393-406.
Among top 10% most read papers in 2018-2019, POM.
EV Sharing:
Charging an Electric Vehicle Sharing Fleet.
Long He, Guangrui Ma, Wei Qi and Xin Wang.
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 23.2 (2021): 471-487.
Winner of the 2022 INFORMS ENRE Best Publication Award in Energy.
Microgrids & Self-Driving:
When Shared Autonomous Electric Vehicles Meet Microgrids: Citywide Energy-Mobility Orchestration.
Wei Qi, Mengyi Sha and Shanling Li.
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 24.5 (2022): 2389-2406.
Lead article in the Special Issue on Smart City Operations.
Revival of Battery Swapping:
Scaling Up Electric-Vehicle Battery Swapping Services in Cities: A Joint Location and Repairable-Inventory Model.
Wei Qi, Yuli Zhang and Ningwei Zhang.
Management Science, accepted.
Best Paper Award Finalist, CSAMSE 2021.
Winner of the 2023 INFORMS TSL Best Paper Award.
Retail on Wheels (“地摊经济”):
Stall Economy: The Value of Mobility in Retail on Wheels.
Junyu Cao and Wei Qi.
Operations Research, 71.2 (2022): 708-726.
Second-Place Winner of the 2022 INFORMS Service Science Best Cluster Paper Award.
Energy Omni-Sharing:
Crowdsourcing Electric Mobility for Omni-Sharing Distributed Energy Resources.
With Wenqing Ai and Tianhu Deng.
Major revision at M&SOM.
Honorable Mention, 2022 Student Paper Competition of College of Sustainable Operations of POMS.
Best Student Paper Award Finalist, 2021 INFORMS Conference on Service Science.
Third Place, Best Paper Award Competition, 2022 Digital Supply Chain and Supplier Diversity Conference.
Online Facility Location:
Online Facility Location.
With Junyu Cao and Yan Zhang.
Submitted.
Hydrogen Infrastructure:
From Curtailed Renewable Energy to Green Hydrogen: Infrastructure Planning for Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Vehicles.
With Long He, Nan Ke and Hongcai Zhang.
Major revision at MSOM.
Multilocation Newsvendor:
Distributionationally Robust Multilocation Newsvendor at Scale: A Scenario-Based Linear Programming Approach.
With Chenxi Li, Sheng Liu, Lun Ran and Aiqi Zhang.
Submitted.
Winner of the 2021 MSOM Data Driven Research Challenge.
Droughts & Seawater Intrusion:
Coastal Groundwater Management: Seawater Intrusion Prevention, Artificial Recharge, and Climate Adaptation.
With Lu Wang and Tianhu Deng.
Major revision at MSOM.
Extreme Rainfalls:
Toward Climate Resilient Cities: Robust Planning Against Extreme Rainfalls.
With Sheng Liu and Aiqi Zhang.
Street Parking:
Coins, Cards, or Apps: Impact of Payment Methods on Street Parking Occupancy and Wait Times.
With Sena Onen Oz and Mehmet Gumus.
Time-Sensitive TSP:
Retail on Autonomous Wheels: A Time-Sensitive Traveling Salesman Problem.
With Zhuolun Dong and Junyu Cao.
Finalist, 2023 INFORMS Undergraduate Operations Research Prize.
Specialty: Energy and Transportation Systems:
Farsighted Stability of Distributed Energy Resource Sharing.
W. Ai, T. Deng, W. Qi.
Applied Energy, accepted in 2022.
A Second Order Cone Programming Model for PEV Fast-Charging Station Planning.
H. Zhang, S. J. Moura, Z. Hu, W. Qi and Y. Song.
IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, vol.33, no.3, pp. 2763-2777, May 2018.
Joint Planning of PEV Fast-Charging Network and Distributed PV Generation Using the Accelerated Generalized Benders Decomposition.
H. Zhang, S. J. Moura, Z. Hu, W. Qi and Y. Song.
IEEE Transactions on Transportation Electrification, 4.3 (2018): 789-803.
Coordinating and Sharing Demand-Side Energy Resources - A Conceptual Design.
W. Qi, B. Shen, H. Zhang and Z. M. Shen.
Energy, vol.135, 15 September 2017, Pages 455–465.
Hierarchical Coordinated Control of Plug-in Electric Vehicles Charging in Multi-family Dwellings.
W. Qi, Z. Xu, Z. M. Shen, Z. Hu and Y. Song.
IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, vol.5, no.3, pp.1465-1474, May 2014.
Distributed Supervisory Predictive Control of Distributed Wind and Solar Energy Generation Systems.
W. Qi, J. Liu and P. D. Christofides.
IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, 21, 504-512, 2013.
Supervisory Predictive Control for Long-Term Scheduling of an Integrated Wind/Solar Energy Generation and Water Desalination System.
W. Qi, J. Liu and P. D. Christofides.
IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, 20, 504-512, 2012.
A Distributed Control Framework for Smart Grid Development: Energy/Water System Optimal Operation and Electric Grid Integration.
W. Qi, J. Liu and P. D. Christofides.
Journal of Process Control, 21, 1504-1516, 2011.
Supervisory Predictive Control of Stand-Alone Wind-Solar Energy Generation Systems.
W. Qi, J. Liu, X. Chen and P. D. Christofides.
IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, 19, 199-207, 2011.
Conference Papers & Technical Reports:
Dairui Wang, Junyu Cao, Yan Zhang, Wei Qi, "Cascading bandits: optimizing recommendation frequency in delayed feedback environments," Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (Neurips) 2023.
T. Wang, C. Wu, W. Qi, "On Data-driven Multi-Product Pricing," American Control Conference (ACC), New Orleans, Louisiana, May 2021.
Also published in IEEE Control Systems Letters, vol. 5, no. 5, pp. 1687-1692, Nov. 2021.
H. Zhang, S. J. Moura, Z. Hu, W. Qi, and Y. Song, "Joint PEV Charging Station and Distributed PV Generation Planning," IEEE Power & Energy Soc. Gen. Meeting, 2017.
H. Zhang, W. Qi, Z. Hu, and Y. Song, "Planning Hydrogen Refueling Stations with Coordinated On-Site Electrolytic Production," IEEE Power & Energy Soc. Gen. Meeting, 2017.
W. Qi, J. Liu, and P. D. Christofides. A two-time-scale framework for supervisory predictive control of an integrated wind/solar energy generation and water desalination system. In Proceedings of the American Control Conference, pages 2677-2682, San Francisco, California, 2011.
W. Qi, J. Liu and P. D. Christofides. Supervisory predictive control of an integrated wind/solar energy generation and water desalination system. In Proceedings of the 9th International Symposium on Dynamics and Control of Process Systems, pages 821-826, Leuven, Belgium, 2010.
Dupuy, Max, Fredrich Kahrl, Frederick Weston, Bo Shen, Andy Satchwell, Peter Cappers, Jennifer Potter, Wei Qi, Ella Zhou, Yingchen Zhang, John Barnett, Travis Lowder, and Lars Bregnbaek. Power Consumption, Demand and Competition Cooperation: Recommendations for the Pilots in Guangdong, Jilin, Jiangsu, and Shanghai. 2017.
Qi, Wei, Roger Sathre, William R Morrow, III, and Arman Shehabi. Unit price scaling trends for chemical products. Berkeley, 2015. LBNL-189844.
Book Chapter:
He L., Ma G., Qi W., Wang X., Hou S. (2022) Planning and Management of Charging Facilities for Electric Vehicle Sharing. In: Pardalos P.M., Rassia S.T., Tsokas A. (eds) Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Optimization Tools for Smart Cities. Springer Optimization and Its Applications, vol 186. Springer, Cham.
Grants:
National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).
Role: Principal Investigator.
Title: Resilient Operations of Urban Lifeline Project Under Information Insufficiency.
Length: 2023-2026.
Team members: Yong Liang, Junbo Zhang, Xun Zhang, Zihao Jiao, Maxime Cohen, Sheng Liu, Yexin Li, Lun Yu and Xiaoyu Duan.
Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Partnership Engage Grant.
Role: Co-investigator.
Title: Introducing AI in Community Organizations: Designing and Implementing Smart Meals-on-Wheels Operations.
Length: 2021-2022.
Total Amount: $24,795.
Team members: Juan Serpa (PI), Saibal Ray, Grant McKenzie, Graham MacDonald and Morty Yalovsky.
CIHR’s Healthy Cities Research Initiative (HCRI).
Role: Co-applicant.
Title: The Implementing Smart Cities Interventions to Build Healthy Cities (SMART) Training Platform.
Length: 2021-2027.
Total Amount: $4.95 million.
PIs: Laurette Dubé, David Ma, and Miyoung Suh.
Fonds Québécois de la Recherche sur la Société et la Culture (FRQSC) and National Science Foundation of China (NSFC) Research Program on Smart Cities and Big Data.
Role: Principal Investigator.
Title: Data-Driven Smart City Operations Management: a System Coupling Perspective.
Length: 2020-2023.
Total Amount: $145,061 (Quebec Side).
Team members: Maxime Cohen, Michel Gendreau, Xue (Steve) Liu.
IVADO Funding Program for Fundamental Research Projects.
Role: Principal Investigator.
Title: Joint OR/ML Methodologies for Retail on Wheels.
Length: 2020-2022.
Total Amount: $171,645.
Team members: Xue (Steve) Liu, Michelle Lu, Zuo-Jun Max Shen.
Courses:
At Tsinghua:
Operations Research II: Applied Stochastic Models (Undergraduate Core Course)
Strategic Management (International Master of Engineering Management (IMEM) Program)
Systems Engineering (Master of Engineering Management (MEM) Program)
At McGill:
MGSC 404: Foundations of Decision Analytics (Undergraduate Business Analytics Concentration)
MGSC 603: Foundations of Data Analytics (Joint Master Program with Zhejiang University, China)
MGCR 271: Business Statistics (Undergraduate Core Course)
Students and Postdoc Collaborators:
Postdocs:
Mengyi Sha.
Aiqi Zhang (Co-Supervisor), assistant professor at the Lazaridis School of Business & Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University.
Xiaojin Fu (Co-Supervisor), First Placement: Noah's Ark Lab.
PhD Students:
Sena Onen Oz (McGill Desautels)
Zichun Liu (McGill Desautels)
Yan Zhang (McGill Desautels)
Undergraduate Students:
Sherry Sun (2020) - B.S. at McGill. First Position: Master of Finance at MIT.
Yingchen Liu (2020) - B.S. at McGill. First Position: Master in Data Science at Harvard.
Belinda Zhang (2021) - B.S. at McGill. First Position: Master in Analytics at Hong Kong University.
Lingqi Guo (2022) - B.S. at McGill. First Position: Master in Analytics at Berkeley.
Jiaying Yao (2022) - B.S. at McGill. First Position: Master in Management Analytics at McGill.
Xinyue Zhang (2023) - B.S. at McGill. First Position: Master in Operations Research at Columbia University.
Celeste Groux (2023) - B.S. at McGill. First Postition: PhD in Cornell ORIE.
Awards:
Winner, INFORMS TSL (Transportation Science & Logistics) Best Paper Award, 2023.
Winner, INFORMS ENRE Best Publication Award in Energy, 2022.
Winner, MSOM Data Driven Research Challenge, 2022.
Finalist, INFORMS Undergraduate Research Prize, 2023, awarded to Zhuolun Dong.
Second-Place Winner, INFORMS Service Science Best Cluster Paper Award, 2022.
Third Place, Best Paper Award Competition, the Digital Supply Chain and Supplier Diversity Conference, 2022.
Honorable Mention, the Student Paper Competition of College of Sustainable Operations of POMS, 2022.
INFORMS SOLA Chuck ReVelle Rising Star Award, 2021.
Best Paper Award Finalist, CSAMSE 2021.
Best Student Paper Award Finalist, 2021 INFORMS Conference On Service Science.
Distinguished Teaching Award - Top Undergraduate Teacher of Year 2019-2020 of Desautels Faculty of Management.
M&SOM Meritorious Service Award, 2020.
M&SOM Meritorious Service Award, 2019.
Top Downloaded Paper, Production and Operations Management, 2018-2019.
AOL ACE Internship Award for Excellent Contribution, Palo Alto, CA, 2014.
UC Berkeley Full Fellowship, 2011-2012.
UCLA Full Engineering Graduate Research Fellowship, 2010-2011.
Outstanding Graduate of Zhejiang University, 2010.
Certificate of Excellence Chu Kochen Honors Program, 2010.
Meritorious Winner of International Mathematical Contest in Modeling, 2009.
In the News:
· A more decision-oriented and synergy-oriented paradigm for next-gen urban transportation. The Hill Times, March 2022.
· Can crowdshipping solve last-mile delivery shortages? Trucknews.com, December 2020.
· Can Smart Cities Be Smarter? Delve, February 2021.
