Events

Professor Adam Elmachtoub
Associate Professor
Vice Chair of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
Columbia University

Price discrimination strategies, which offer different prices to customers based on differences in their valuations, have become common practice. While it allows sellers to increase their profits, it also raises several concerns in terms of fairness, e.g., by charging higher prices (or denying access) to protected groups. This topic has received extensive attention from media, industry, and regulatory agencies. In this talk, we consider the problem of setting prices for different groups under fairness constraints, and the corresponding impact it has on consumer surplus and social welfare. We consider pricing under a monopolist, vehicle sharing system, virtual power plant, and a data-driven decision pipeline.

Adam Elmachtoub is an Associate Professor and Vice Chair of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at Columbia University, and a member of the Data Science Institute and DAPLab. His research cuts across industries such as e-commerce, logistics, and energy while having two major themes: (i) designing AI methodology that integrates machine learning and decision-making, (ii) simple and fair algorithms for pricing and supply chain management. He received his Ph.D. from MIT ORC, his B.S. from Cornell ORIE, and a diploma from SnE Center at Manalapan HS. His recognitions include the INFORMS Donald P. Gaver, Jr. Early Career Award for Excellence in Operations Research, NSF CAREER Award, INFORMS Revenue Management and Pricing (RMP) Section Prize, INFORMS Junior Faculty Interest Group (JFIG) Best Paper Award, Columbia’s Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching, SOCG Great Teacher Award, two-time finalist for the INFORMS RMP Practice Award, and Forbes 30 under 30.