On the afternoon of July 02, 2024, the Business School held the 37th Session of the Series of Academic Lectures Celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the Founding of Central University of Finance and Economics and the 12th Session of the Excellent Academic Forum Lecture Series in 2024 at the Conference Room 105 of the Main Teaching Building on theXueyuanSouth Road Campus of the Central University of Finance and Economics. Professor Zhao Lei from the Department of Industrial Engineering, Tsinghua University was invited as the guest speaker of this lecture. More than 20 people from the Business School, including teachers, doctoral students and undergraduate students, attended this event.

This meeting was chaired by MouShandong, an associate professor from the Business School. Before the official start of this lecture, ProfessorMouShandong introduced Professor Zhao Lei’s resume in detail. Dr. Zhao Lei is a professor at the Department of Industrial Engineering, Tsinghua University, director of the Operations & Services Research Laboratory (TOpSLab), and director of the Transportation Science and Logistics Research Center. In recent years, he has been mainly engaged in stochastic optimization methods and their application in logistics management (in particular logistics distribution management inultra-largecities), supply chain risk management, andomni-channel retailing and logistics.

The topic of Professor Zhao Lei’s lecture is “Application of Sequential Decision-making Problems and Simulation Optimization in Transportation and Logistics”. Professor Zhao Lei first introduced the basic characteristics of simulation optimization methods and sequential decision-making problems, and then examined the modeling elements and challenges of the Markov decision-making process from two perspectives. Then, he shared his research and thoughts on mathematical modeling and strategy design processes in combination with several research topics in the field of transportation and logistics application.

After the sharing, with regard to the topic of Professor Zhao Lei’s lecture, the attending teachers and students actively participated in the discussion about mathematical modeling, research methodology and publication of high-level papers, further deepening their academic exchanges.

The “Excellent Academic Forum” is an academic exchange platform established by the Business School to fulfill the mission of “contributing new management knowledge”, which focuses on cutting-edge theoretical issues and organizational development dilemmas in the discipline of business administration and the Chinese enterprise management practice, and brings together frontier ideas and innovative ideas in China and abroad, so as to explore Chinese solutions for China's social and economic development.