INFORMATION OF PLENARY SPEACH

(in alphabetic order):


The International conference on Management and Operations Research 2024 has invited several famous scholars to give plenary speeches (more speakers to be added). By now, the plenary speakers of ICMOR 2024 are as follows (in alphabetic order):

•     Prof. Jian Chen, Tsinghua University

•     Prof. Douglas Cumming, Florida Atlantic University

•     Prof. Ming Hu, The University of Toronto

•     Prof. Bohui Zhang, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

•     Prof. Huiyu Zhou, University of Leicester



Prof. Jian Chen  

Tsinghua University

Jian Chen is the professor in the school of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University. He is also the Lenovo Chair professor. His research interests focus on Supply Chain Management, E-Business, Business Intelligence and Decision Analysis as well as Forecasting and Optimization Techniques.

He has authored/co-authored over 300 papers in referred journals, including European Journal of Operational Research; Omega, The International Journal of Management Science; Production and Operations Management, etc.

He is the recipient of Award for Outstanding Research in Natural Sciences/Award for Outstanding Research in Science and Technology Progress/Award for Outstanding Research in Humanities and Social Sciences by Ministry of Education, Ministry of Education Changjiang Scholars, Academic Science and Technology Progress Award by Beijing Municipal Government, etc.

Prof. Chen serves on a number of academic organizations, such as Regional Vice President of Production and Operations Management Society (POMS); Chairman of the Service Systems and Organizations Technical Committee of IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society; National Natural Science Foundation of China; Chair/Co-Chair of many international conferences. He is also serves as associate editor/area editor/EB member for a number of international journals.

Title: Research on Green Packaging Strategy under Consideration of Consumers' Pro-Environmental Behavior



Prof. Douglas Cumming  

Florida Atlantic University

Douglas Cumming, the internationally renowned scholar in the field of finance and entrepreneurship, is well-known in the academic community for his pioneering research in venture capital, private equity, and innovation policy. He is currently the DeSantis Distinguished Professor of Finance and Entrepreneurship at Florida Atlantic University, and is also a visiting professor at the University of Birmingham in the UK and a researcher at the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI). Professor Cumming has published more than 280 academic papers, which have been widely published in top FT international journals such as Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of International Business Studies, and Journal of Business Ethics. His research results have been cited more than 29,000 times on Google Scholar, fully demonstrating the breadth and depth of his academic influence. In 2023, he was ranked as the No. 1 scholar in the field of finance in the United States, and was named a highly cited scholar by Clarivate in 2022. In 2019, he was awarded the Silver Medal for his multiple substantive contributions to the Journal of International Business Studies. In addition, he has been invited to participate in 191 international authoritative academic conferences such as "FMA", "IEFS", and "EBES", and made 72 high-quality academic reports, including 20 keynote speeches. Professor Cumming not only enjoys a high reputation in the academic community, but also actively participates in professional services and consulting, providing professional consulting on financial market supervision to regulators in North America, Europe and Australia, and providing expert advice to the Canadian Revenue Agency. He is also the editor-in-chief, deputy editor-in-chief and guest editor of 21 internationally renowned journals such as "Journal of Corporate Finance" and "Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions & Money". His research results have won a number of research grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), Paolo Baffi Central Bank and Financial Regulation Center, AEI Brookings Institution, SWIFT Institute, etc., with a total amount of more than $250,420. In the RePEc ranking, Professor Cumming was listed as the top 5% of authors in the world, and this honor further proves his important position in the academic community. Professor Cumming's research results, especially in the fields of equity crowdfunding and government venture capital, provide scientific theoretical support for the theoretical and industrial circles to understand and apply these financing methods. His research not only has important theoretical value and has a significant impact in the academic community, but also has practical guiding value for the transformation and upgrading of modern industries.

Title: An International Analysis of Procurement Decisions and Firm Value. European Corporate Governance Institute

Abstract

 We examine whether political connections influence public procurement award decisions made by government bodies worldwide. We find that politically connected firms are more likely to receive government contracts and larger value contracts. Focusing on defense contracts, where the strength of politically connected social ties can be more directly assessed, we find that employing former military personnel from the contract-awarding country in management increases the value of awarded contracts by around 40%. This effect is more pronounced with high-ranking ex-military personnel (88% increase) compared to lower-ranking ones (26% increase). Moreover, our analysis reveals that political connections have a stronger impact on government contracting for foreign-incorporated firms (54% increase in contract value) than on domestic firms (29% increase). Financial and institutional development significantly moderate the effects of political connections. We also observe that politically connected government contracting positively impacts firm value in less developed countries but negatively in more developed ones. Furthermore, the effect on firm value is stronger for foreign contractors than local ones. Lastly, our study demonstrates that politically connected government contracting distorts firms’ capital allocation efficiency, particularly for local contractors in developed countries. Our main findings remain robust across various variable definitions, estimation techniques, and adjustments for potential endogeneity

 


Prof. Ming Hu  

The University of Toronto

Ming Hu is the University of Toronto Distinguished Professor of Business Operations and Analytics, a professor of operations management at the Rotman School of Management, and an Amazon Scholar. He is the editor-in-chief of Nav. Res. Log., associate editor of Management Sci., Oper. Res., and M&SOM, and senior editor of POM. He received a master's degree in Applied Mathematics from Brown University in 2003 and a Ph.D. in Operations Research from Columbia University in 2009. For more about his research, please visit http://ming.hu .

Title: Big, Small, and Small+ Data-Driven OM

Abstract

 We discuss three data-driven decision-making scenarios in classical operations management (inventory or pricing) settings, using big or small data or small data but with one chance of experimentation. First, with big data, we study a contextual-based newsvendor problem using deep neural networks (DNN). Empirical process theory is pivotal in ensuring that the asymptotic behavior of observed data converges to the true underlying distribution as the sample size increases. We provide theoretical guarantees in terms of excess risk bounds for the DNN solution, characterized by the network structure and sample size, validating the applicability of DNNs in relevant OM contexts. These excess risk bounds exhibit polynomial growth in the feature dimension and attain the minimax convergence rate (with respect to the sample size) in expectation. Second, with small data, traditional frequentist methods may be ineffective, and we propose using the empirical Bayes (EB) method to achieve transfer learning in estimating unknown parameters using data across many products and subsequently making decisions based on these estimates. We illustrate this approach with a multi-product pricing problem, employing a hierarchical feature-based demand model and a nonparametric maximum likelihood method to derive the prior from the data. The effectiveness of the EB method is demonstrated by characterizing the regret bound using an oracle benchmark that presumes prior knowledge of the underlying distribution. Third, we study the benefits of one-shot price experimentation for a seller in setting a price who only knows the exact purchase probability associated with a single historical price and aims to maximize the worst-case revenue ratio compared to an oracle with complete knowledge of the value distribution. We analytically characterize the optimal distributionally robust experimental and final price points, obtain their tight performance guarantee for any historical purchase probability, and then evaluate the value of experimentation, which exhibits a two-modal behavior with respect to the historical purchase probability.

 


Prof. Bohui Zhang  

The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Bohui Zhang is Presidential Chair Professor of Finance and Executive Dean of School of Management and Economics at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. He is also the associate director of Shenzhen Institute of Data Economy, and the director of the Center for FinTech and Social Finance at Shenzhen Finance Institute. Before joining CUHK Shenzhen, he was the professor of finance at UNSW Business School, UNSW Sydney, and the associate director of the Institute of Global Finance. He studies the role of information intermediaries on capital markets, Chinese and foreign capital markets, and Fintech. His papers have been accepted for publication in the global top-tier finance, accounting, and business journals. He has also been awarded with research grants from Australian Research Council, the Centre for International Finance and Regulation, Australian School of Business, and National Natural Science Foundation of China.

Title: Taking the Pulse of Firm Innovation from Online Job Postings

Abstract

 In this study, we analyze data on online job postings by US public firms to investigate their R&D activities. Our findings reveal a consistent increase in the demand for R&D human capital from 2010 to 2021. Controlling for other commonly used indicators of firms’ R&D activities, such as R&D expenses and narrative R&D information in 10-K filings, we find that R&D job postings possess incremental predictive power for firms’ future innovation performance. This predictive power is particularly pronounced for firms with higher growth opportunities or lower labor intensity and for R&D job postings that require disruptive technology skills or advanced education. Furthermore, the skills listed in R&D job postings align with the types of patents firms file in the future. Overall, our results highlight the significance of R&D job postings as a valuable source of information regarding firms’ innovation activities. 

 


Prof. Huiyu Zhou  

University of Leicester

Prof. Huiyu Zhou received a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Radio Technology from Huazhong University of Science and Technology of China, and a Master of Science degree in Biomedical Engineering from University of Dundee of United Kingdom, respectively. He was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Computer Vision from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. Prof. Zhou currently is a full Professor at School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, University of Leicester, United Kingdom. He has published over 550 peer-reviewed papers in the field. He was the recipient of "CVIU 2012 Most Cited Paper Award", “MIUA 2020 Best Paper Award”, “ICPRAM 2016 Best Paper Award” and was nominated for “ICPRAM 2017 Best Student Paper Award” and "MBEC 2006 Nightingale Prize". Prof. Zhou serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Recent Advances in Electrical & Electronic Engineering and Associate Editor of IEEE Transaction on Human-Machine Systems, IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics, Pattern Recognition, Scientific Reports, Security and Safety, Machine Intelligence Research, PeerJ Computer Science and IEEE Access, and Area Chair of ICRA, IJCAI and BMVC. He is one of the Technical Committee of “IEEE Cognitive and Development Systems”, “Information Assurance & Intelligent Multimedia-Mobile Communication in IEEE SMC Society”, “Robotics Task Force” and “Biometrics Task Force” of the Intelligent Systems Applications Technical Committee, IEEE Computational Intelligence Society. He has given over 150 invited talks at international conferences, industry and universities, and has served as a chair for 100 international conferences and workshops. His research work has been or is being supported by UK EPSRC, MRC, EU, Royal Society, Leverhulme Trust, Puffin Trust, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Invest NI and industry.

Title: Artificial intelligence in telecommunication – Past, Present and Future.

Abstract

 Artificial intelligence (AI) has been pervasive in many areas of recent scientific and technological development since 2010. Recent research progresses and wide applications include ChatGPT, Claude and Sora, which significantly demonstrate the power of generative artificial intelligence and other AI tools. However, it is not clear how to utilise the available AI technologies for improving quality of various services and products. In this talk, we will start from an example of using ChatGPT to explore the capabilities of AI in telecommunication research. We will discuss how AI helps and supports the development of 5G/6G systems in recent years. Afterwards, we discuss several well-recognised AI systems available to use online, before we explore the missing aspects in those AI systems/tools. Finally, we elaborate the needs of collaboration over different countries.