Saman Lagzi

Welcome to my page!

I am Saman Lagzi, an Assistant Professor of Operations at the UNC Kenan–Flagler Business School. Broadly speaking, my primary research focus is on integrating data analytics into the process of decision-making. In my research, I use data, and design ways to use data, to better guide the decision-making process. My research interests are in the areas of Revenue Management and Pricing and Healthcare Operations Management. 

Using mathematical modeling, integer programming, and approximation algorithms, in one of my research projects I have shown how firms can use their gathered transaction data to price an assortment of products, without running the risk of a demand model misspecification. In another project, using empirical analysis and econometric methods, I shed light on the effects of employing piece-rate compensation schemes by firms whose workers have discretion over which tasks to work on. 

More recently, I have focused on optimizing the output of a fitted neural network over its input. By showing a performance guarantee for this methodology, in terms of the generalization bound of the fitted neural network, when applied to certain stochastic optimization problems, I showcase how it can have significant advantages in solving some of the cornerstone problems in revenue management, such as the newsvendor problem with observable demand features, and the personalized assortment pricing problem. 

Education

PhD, Operations Management and Statistics, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto (2022)

MMath, Combinatorics and Optimization, University of Waterloo (2016)

M. Eng, Industrial and Systems Engineering, Auburn University (2014) 

B.Sc., Industrial Engineering, Sharif University of Technology (2012)