CV

Academic background, experience, presentations, and skills.

Contact Information

Name Yuanyuan Li
Email yuanyuan.li@hec.ca
Website https://yuanyuan517.github.io

Appointment

  • Postdoctoral Researcher, HEC Montréal and GERAD, Montréal, Canada (September 2025–present). Advised by Jean-François Cordeau, Yossiri Adulyasak, and Emma Frejinger.

Education

  • 2020 - 2025

    France

    PhD
    ESSEC Business School
    Operations Research and Operations Management
    • Advised by Claudia Archetti, Ivana Ljubić, and Felix Papier.
  • 2017

    Italy

    MSc
    Polytechnic University of Turin
    Software Engineering
  • 2015

    Italy

    BEng
    Polytechnic University of Turin
    Computer Engineering

Publications and Preprints

  • Sprint or Walk? Managing Start-up Growth Before Facility Investments, with Riccardo Mogre and Felix Papier. Working paper. SSRN
  • Element Selection and Routing for Experiential Service Design: Experience Formation and Stochastic Optimization, with Qiuwei Guo, Yifu Li, and Lindong Liu. Working paper. SSRN
  • Emerging Optimization Problems for Distribution in Same-day Delivery, with Claudia Archetti and Ivana Ljubić. Computers & Operations Research, 182, 107105, 2025. DOI
  • Reinforcement Learning Approaches for the Orienteering Problem with Stochastic and Dynamic Release Dates, with Claudia Archetti and Ivana Ljubić. Transportation Science, 58(5), 1143–1165, 2024. DOI

Professional Experience

  • Researcher, LINKS Foundation, Italy (March 2018–August 2020). Developed optimization and scheduling methods for manufacturing and contributed to project management for the EU Horizon 2020 LEXIS project.
  • Research Intern, Fraunhofer Institute for Transportation and Infrastructure Systems IVI, Germany (April–October 2017). Conducted risk analysis and predictive modeling for the EU Horizon 2020 SYNCHRO-NET project.

Teaching Experience

  • Instructor — Mathematics I for Economics and Finance, ESSEC Business School, France (2024). Undergraduate core course; taught two sections of 70 students each.
  • Instructor — Excel Skills (Spreadsheet Modeling), ESSEC Business School, Singapore (2023). Undergraduate elective course; taught two sections with 47 and 51 students.
  • Instructor — Business Simulation Game, ESSEC Business School, Singapore (2023). Led an online business simulation for 34 undergraduate students focused on global business operations.
  • Teaching Assistant — Decision Analytics, ESSEC Business School, France (2022). Led laboratory sessions and assessed student reports for a Master in Management elective course.
  • Teaching Assistant — Database Management Systems, Polytechnic University of Turin, Italy (2016). Led laboratory sessions on data analysis using commercial and open-source software.

Selected Talks

  • Sprint or Walk? Managing Start-up Growth Before Facility Investments — USTC (2025); INFORMS Annual Meeting (2024); POMS Annual Conference (2024); IESEG–ESSEC–University of Cologne Operations Research Camp (2024); ESSEC Student Research Seminar (2023).
  • Reinforcement Learning Approaches for the Orienteering Problem with Stochastic and Dynamic Release Dates — POM China (2023); EURO (2022); ESSEC Student Research Seminar (2022).
  • Machine Learning Applications in Optimization: Job-Shop Scheduling in Industry 4.0 — ODS (2019); MIM (2019).

Reviewing Activities

Ad Hoc Reviewer: *Transportation Science*; *Production and Operations Management*; *European Journal of Operational Research*; *Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies*; *Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review*; and *Networks*.

Language Proficiency

Chinese: Native
English: Fluent
Italian: Basic
French: Basic