Xiao Lei · 雷骁

Assistant Professor

HKU Business School

Biography

Welcome to my site! I am an Assistant Professor at HKU Business School. I earned my Ph.D. in Operations Research from Columbia University under the guidance of Prof. Adam Elmachtoub. My research is centered on designing enjoyable and sustainable experiences for consumer-driven businesses. Much of my recent work focuses on two major themes:

Optimizing repeated and sequential user experiences in emerging digital platforms, particularly in the gaming industry, and utilizing gaming elements to enhance user experience within educational contexts.
Advocating for socially responsible practices in revenue management and pricing, including fairness, anti-collusion, anti-addiction, and more.

My research has been acknowledged with several prestigious awards, including the George B. Dantzig Dissertation Award, INFORMS Service Science Best Student Paper Award, INFORMS RMP Jeff McGill Best Paper Award, and CSAMSE Best Paper Award. Additionally, my work has been featured on the INFORMS podcast Resoundingly Human and Management Science Review. I also have more than 48,000 followers on Zhihu, a Chinese knowledge sharing platform.

Interests

Digital Economy
People-centric Operations
Socially Responsible Operations
Revenue Management and Pricing

Education

PhD in Operations Research, 2022

Columbia University
MSc in Operations Research, 2018

Columbia University
BSc in Financial Engineering, 2016

University of International Business and Economics

Research

Working Papers:

Regulating Discriminatory Pricing in the Presence of Tacit Collusion.

with Zongsen Yang and Pin Gao.

Content Rotation in the Presence of Satiation Effects.

with Beichen Wan and Shixin Wang.

Matchmaking Strategies for Maximizing Player Engagement in Video Games.

with Mingliu Chen and Adam Elmachtoub.

• Third Prize, IBM Best Student Paper Award (INFORMS Service Science), 2022.
• Accepted to The 23th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC), 2022

Herding, Learning and Incentives for Online Reviews.

with Rajeev Kohli and Yeqing Zhou.

Publications:

Price Discrimination with Fairness Constraints , Management Science (2022).

with Maxime Cohen and Adam Elmachtoub.

• Featured article on Management Science, December 2022 (Blog in Management Science Review).
• Finalist, the Jeff McGill Student Paper Award (INFORMS Revenue Management & Pricing), 2022.
• Oral presentation at The 4th Workshop on Mechanism Design for Social Good (MD4SG), 2020
• Oral presentation at The 4th ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT), 2021

Loot Box Pricing and Design , Management Science (2021).

with Ningyuan Chen, Adam Elmachtoub and Michael Hamilton.

• Third Prize, 2021 CSAMSE Best Paper Award.
• Accepted to The 21th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC), 2020 [Video]
• Winner, IBM Best Student Paper Award (INFORMS Service Science), 2019.
• Invited to present at Federal Trade Commission (FTC) workshop.
• Media Converage: [PC Gamer] [Tech Xplore] [游民星空 (Mandarin)]

Pricing of Reusable Resources under Ambiguous Distributions of Demand and Service Time with Emerging Applications , European Journal of Operational Research (2020).

with Vinh Xuan Doan and Siqian Shen.

Dynamic Pricing and Learning with Competition: Insights from the Dynamic Pricing Challenge at the 2017 INFORMS RM & Pricing Conference , Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management (2019).

with Ruben van de Geer, Arnoud V. den Boer,Christopher Bayliss, Christine S. M. Currie, Andria Ellina, Malte Esders, Alwin Haensel, Kyle D. S. Maclean, Antonio Martinez-Sykora, Asbjørn Nilsen Riseth, Fredrik Ødegaard and Simos Zachariades.

Stochastic Maximum Flow Interdiction Problems under Heterogeneous Risk Preferences , Computers & Operations Research (2018).

with Siqian Shen and Yongjia Song.

PhD Dissertation:

Revenue Management in Video Games and with Fairness.

• Honorable Mention, the George B. Dantzig Dissertation Award, 2023.

Honors & Awards

Honorable Mention, the George B. Dantzig Dissertation Award, 2023

Finalist, the Jeff Mcgill Student Paper Award (INFORMS RMP Society), 2022

Third Place, IBM Best Student Paper Award (INFORMS Service Science Society), 2022

Finalist, CSAMSE Best Paper Award (Chinese Scholars Association for Management Science and Engineering), 2021

First Place, IBM Best Student Paper Award (INFORMS Service Science Society), 2019

Winner, Dynamic Pricing Challenge at INFORMS RM&P Conference, 2017

Miscellaneous

Travel:

I travel a lot, for conferences and for vacation. I enjoy and marvel at the fantastic cultures and fabulous sceneries around the world. Below is a footprint of myself.

Photography:

I’m constantly studying and improving my photography skills. Below is a sample of my work from my instagram. They are from Banff in Canada, Dream Lake in USA, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, and Quarry Bay in Hong Kong.

R:

I’m an intensive R user. As you may have noticed, the footprint is made by R. (Want to make it for yourself? Try this code.) Also, this site is made in RStudio, with the Academic Theme by Hugo.