Princeton University - Operations Research and Financial Engineering

On May 5, ORFE graduate student Irina Wang successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation, “Data-Driven Methods for Fast and Reliable Optimization Under Uncertainty.”
Irina is pictured alongside her committee members, Professors Bartolomeo Stellato, Amir Ali Ahmadi, and Jason M. Klusowski, as well as friends and family who joined to celebrate this important milestone.

Following her graduation, Irina will take on exciting new roles as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology and as an Assistant Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. 

Congratulations, Irina! We wish you all the best in this exciting next chapter and look forward to the continued impact of your work. 😊 👏 🎉

On May 5th, ORFE graduate student Felix Hoefer successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation, “Mean-Field Game Theory Beyond Monotonicity.”
 
Felix celebrated this milestone alongside his committee, Professors Mete Soner, Ludovic Tangpi, Emma Hubert, and Rene Carmona (via Zoom). As well as friends who came together to support him on this special occasion.
 
We’re proud to share that Felix will be joining The University of Chicago Booth School of Business as a Postdoctoral Fellow.
Congratulations, Felix! Wishing you continued success and impact in your research and career ahead.👏⭐️🎓

We are delighted to celebrate Yucheng Guo, who successfully defended his Ph.D. on Monday, May 5th. His dissertation, “Particle Systems with Singular Interactions and Cascades: Mean-Field and Graphical Models,” highlights rigorous research and meaningful contributions to the field.

Surrounded by support from his committee, Professors Mykhaylo Shkolnikov, Ludovic Tangpi, and Rene Carmona (joining via Zoom) as well as friends and classmates, the occasion marked both achievement and community.

We’re excited to share that Yucheng will soon begin his next chapter as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University.
Congratulations, Yucheng, on this outstanding accomplishment! Wishing you continued success and discovery ahead! 🌟🎓👏

🎓 Huge congratulations to ORFE graduate student Ruiqi Yu on successfully defending her Ph.D. on May 4th!
Her thesis, “Foundational Methods for Causal Estimation and Inference,” marks an incredible achievement. Ruiqi celebrated this milestone with her committee, Professors Matias Cattaneo, Jason Klusowski, and Boris Hanin. Along with friends and classmates.

Next stop: Chicago Trading Company as a Quantitative Researcher! 📈

We’re so proud of your hard work and accomplishments. congrats, Ruiqi! 👏

Congratulations to Alessandro Chiusolo on the successful defense of his Ph.D. dissertation, “Continuous-Time Contract Theory and Principal-Agent Problems with Volatility Control,” on Monday, May 4th.

Alessandro is pictured with his committee members: Emma Hubert, Ronnie Sircar, and Ludovic Tangpi. Along with friends celebrating this achievement.

Following graduation, Alessandro will join JPMorgan Chase & Co. as a Quantitative Researcher. Congratulations, Alessandro, and best wishes on this exciting next chapter!🎓👏⭐️

🎉🎓 Congratulations to the ORFE Class of 2026 🎓🎉

On Class Day, May 25th, ORFE celebrated 67 BSE graduates, along with 14 newly defended Ph.D. students. A proud moment shared across the ORFE community and a remarkable achievement to all!
⭐️🐯👏

🎓

Congratulations to ORFE Graduate Student Til Raphael Saenger on successfully defending his Ph.D. on Monday, May 4th! His dissertation, “From Discovery to Control: Causal Inference and Controllable Generation for Understanding Persuasion,” marks an impressive achievement at the intersection of statistics, machine learning, and decision science.

Pictured alongside his committee members, Professors Brandon Stewart, Ronnie Sircar, and Jianqing Fan, as well as classmates and friends who celebrated this milestone with him.

We are also excited to share that Till will be joining Balyasny Asset Management as a Quantitative Researcher. Wishing him continued success in this next chapter!🧑‍🎓🎉

Congratulations Nirel!! We are so proud to have you as an ORFE Alumni!

: “I didn’t come into Princeton planning to study Princeton University - Operations Research and Financial Engineering. I started in chemical and biological engineering, thinking I’d be a biomedical engineer. But after taking core chemistry classes, I started rethinking my path, especially whether I wanted to go to grad school, med school, or enter industry.

Talking to upperclassmen led me to ORFE. What stood out was how flexible it was. I could shape it into data science, finance, or something more technical. At the same time, I was still interested in biomedical applications. I spent that summer at Wake Forest University working on machine learning in a chemical engineering lab through an REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates). That experience made me realize how much I enjoyed building models and working with data.

In my junior fall, I studied abroad in Stockholm, Sweden, where I focused on machine learning and saw how data science is applied internationally. We visited places like Berlin and Gothenburg and saw startups in action, providing me with a broader perspective on how this work translates outside the classroom.

I’ve also interned at Yahoo, working on the monetization team, where I helped build predictive models for option pricing using large-scale datasets. That experience showed me what it looks like to apply these skills in a real industry setting and confirmed that I enjoy working with data at large scale.

My senior thesis brings a lot of my interests together. I’m working on predicting power outages in Ghana using satellite, weather data, and sensor data. The goal is to understand which factors are most likely to lead to outages. I had the chance to travel to Ghana to conduct interviews and get a better sense of how these systems work on the ground.

On campus, I’ve been involved in a range of communities, from playing bass clarinet in the orchestra, vice president of the Powerlifting Club, treasurer for the National Society of Black Engineers, and a member of the Princeton African Student Association, the Ghana Student Association, and being a Community Living Advisor in Henry Hall.

After graduation, I’ll be heading to Carnegie Mellon University to pursue a master’s in applied data science as a Rales Fellow!" - Nirel Amoyaw '26, Princeton University - Operations Research and Financial Engineering.

On Monday, May 4, Zhixu Silvia Tao successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation, “On the Topics of Federated Learning and Large Language Models.”

She was joined by her committee members, Professors Sanjeev Kulkarni, Jason M. Klusowski, and Jianqing Fan. Along with classmates and friends who came out to celebrate this special milestone.

Excited to see what’s next as Zhixu heads to Amazon as an Applied Scientist! 🚀 👏

On May 4th, Jiawei Ge defended her dissertation, “Toward Reliable AI: Statistical Foundations of Generalization, Modeling, and Uncertainty Quantification”.
 
She is pictured here with her committee; Professors Jianqing Fan, Jason Klusowski, and Elizaveta Rebrova, as well as with friends and classmates who celebrated this milestone alongside her.
 
Next up, Jiawei will join the Department of Statistics at UC Berkeley and Cornell University as a Postdoctoral Researcher and Assistant Professor.
Wishing Jiawei continued success as she begins this exciting new chapter! 👏 👍 🎉