Miaolan Xie
I am an Assistant Professor in the Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering at Purdue University. My research lies at the intersection of mathematical optimization, stochastic processes, and machine learning, drawing on tools from optimization theory, statistics, and applied probability.
I develop adaptive optimization algorithms that are both theoretically grounded and practically effective — enhancing the efficiency and reliability of existing methods, especially in challenging settings involving noisy or messy data.
I am actively seeking motivated PhD students to join my research group. Reach out if you'd like to work with me!
I completed my Ph.D. in Operations Research and Information Engineering at Cornell University, with Professor Katya Scheinberg. Prior to joining Purdue, I was a postdoctoral Principal Researcher at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, affiliated with the Healthcare Initiative, working with Professor Dan Adelman.
I obtained my Bachelor of Mathematics with majors in Pure Mathematics and Combinatorics and Optimization from the University of Waterloo. I completed my Master's degree with Levent Tunçel in Combinatorics and Optimization at the University of Waterloo. Before starting my Ph.D., I worked as a data scientist in Alibaba on the retail supply chain platform team, and prior to that I worked in Baidu and PwC Consulting. In the summer of 2022, I was a Givens Associate in the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory, working with Stefan Wild and Matt Menickelly.
Publications
* indicates authorship in alphabetical order by last name.
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SIAM Journal on Optimization, 2025
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Mathematical Programming, 2025
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SIAM Journal on Optimization, 2024
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Winter Simulation Conference, 2023
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NeurIPS OPT Workshop, 2022
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NeurIPS OPT Workshop, 2021
Talks
Reliable and Adaptive Stochastic Optimization in the Face of Messy Data (with Highly Corrupted Inputs and
Heavy-Tailed noises)
- International Conference on Continuous Optimization (ICCOPT) July 2025
- Loyola University Chicago, Mathematics and Statistics Department Seminars April 2025
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, SINE Seminars April 2025
- Argonne National Laboratory, LANS Seminars April 2025
- INFORMS Annual Meeting October 2024
Reliable Adaptive Stochastic Optimization for Messy Data: with High Probability Guarantees
- The 2023 Annual Midwest Optimization Meeting October 2023
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INFORMS Annual Meeting
🏆 Second Place in Student Paper Prize of INFORMS Optimization Society
October 2023
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YinzOR Student Conference
🏆 Second Place in Flash Talk Competition
August 2023
High Probability Complexity Bounds for Adaptive Optimization Methods with Stochastic Oracles
- Modeling and Optimization: Theory and Applications Conference (MOPTA) August 2023
- International Conference on Stochastic Programming July 2023
- SIAM Conference on Optimization June 2023
Stochastic Adaptive Regularization Method with Cubics: A High Probability Complexity Bound
- The 25th International Symposium on Mathematical Programming July 2024
- INFORMS Optimization Society Conference March 2024
- 2023 Winter Simulation Conference December 2023
- New York City Operations Day (Poster) May 2023
- Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems OPT Workshop (Poster) December 2022
- INFORMS Annual Meeting October 2022
High Probability Iteration and Sample Complexity for Adaptive Step Search via Stochastic Oracles
- Joint PhD Colloquium (Cornell ORIE, Columbia DRO, IEOR, NYU Stern) May 2023
- International Conference on Continuous Optimization (ICCOPT) July 2022
High Probability Complexity Bounds for Line Search Based on Stochastic Oracles
- INFORMS Optimization Society Conference March 2022
- Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (Poster) December 2021
- INFORMS Annual Meeting October 2021
- Cornell ORIE Young Researchers Workshop (Poster) October 2021
- Modeling and Optimization: Theory and Applications Conference August 2021
High Probability Step Size Lower Bound for Adaptive Stochastic Optimization
- Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems OPT Workshop (Poster) December 2021
ControlBurn: Feature Selection by Sparse Forests
- ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining August 2021
Teaching & Service
Academic Service
- Journal Refereeing
- Mathematical Programming
- SIAM Journal on Optimization
- Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications
- INFORMS Journal on Computing
- INFORMS Journal on Data Science
- Mathematical Programming Computation
- Journal of Scientific Computing
- IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems
- Open Journal of Mathematical Optimization
- Conference Refereeing
- Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS)
- International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML)
- International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS)
- International OPT Workshop on Optimization for Machine Learning (NeurIPS OPT)
- Conference Session Organizer
- INFORMS Annual Meeting, 2025
- INFORMS Annual Meeting, 2024
- International Symposium on Mathematical Programming (ISMP), 2024
- INFORMS Annual Meeting, 2023
- Modeling and Optimization: Theory and Applications Conference (MOPTA), 2023
- Colloquium Organizer
- Columbia DRO, IEOR, NYU Stern, Cornell ORIE Joint PhD Colloquium, May 2023
- Cornell ORIE weekly PhD Colloquium, 2022 -2023
Contact
- Email: miaolanx at purdue dot edu
- Office: Grissom 282
Other
- I am in general very interested in foraging, gardening, hiking and cooking. Recently I became especially interested in foraging, and have already found wild strawberry, broadleaf & narrowleaf plantain, ground ivy, clover and dandelion in our backyard!
- I volunteered to teach English to migrant children in rural areas of Henan and Shanghai with Stepping Stones China in 2017. This was truly an incredible and unforgettable experience!