Yan Zhang

I am a Ph.D. Candidate in Operations Management at the Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University. I received my B.Eng. in Industrial Engineering from Tsinghua University.

My research focuses on smart city operations and emerging service systems, with an emphasis on retail and logistics. I study how firms design and operate services enabled by new technologies, including mobile stores and pickup networks. Combining analytical modeling, machine learning, and optimization, I develop decision methods and managerial insights grounded in practical operational challenges. AI is an important part of my research, both as a means of improving operational decisions and as a service whose resources must be managed. My recent work examines tool acquisition and resource decisions in LLM-based agents.