Yin Research Lab at the University of South Carolina

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Zhuoli Yin

Assistant Professor
Industrial Engineering Program, Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of South Carolina

Zhuoli Yin develops AI-augmented optimization systems for transportation, logistics, and sustainable computing. His work spans the full research lifecycle—from problem formulation and algorithm design to large-scale simulation and deployment.

He earned his Ph.D. and M.S. in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University and his B.E. in Electronic and Information Engineering from Beihang University.

Curriculum vitae · Google Scholar · USC faculty profile

Office: C113C · Address: 300 Main St, Columbia, SC 29201
Email: zyin at sc dot edu

Yin Lab is looking for highly motivated PhD students starting from Spring or Fall 2027. Please check Prospective Students. We also welcome prospective master's, undergraduate students and remote internship who want to work at the intersection of AI, optimization, and real-world systems.

🔥 News

• 08/2026: I joined the University of South Carolina as an Assistant Professor and am recruiting Ph.D. students to join my research lab.
• 07/2026: I successfully defended my Ph.D. thesis titled “Learning-Augmented Optimization Systems”. I really appreciate my advisor, Dr. Hua Cai, and my advisory committee! 🎓
• 05/2026: I will attend the 2026 IISE Annual Conference in Arlington, TX, where I will present my latest work on the sustainable use of AI for optimization. I will also join as a panelist for “Does AI Belong at the Sustainability Table? A Live Multi-AI Panel on Technology, Conscience, and Climate.” Please feel free to come say hi!
• 03/2026: I received the Estus H. and Vashti L. Magoon Research Excellence Award from the College of Engineering (COE) at Purdue University. I am grateful to my advisor, Dr. Hua Cai, and to the COE for their support.
• 01/2026: Our paper on VLM-guided optimization for solving large-scale TSP is accepted to ICLR 2026! Thanks to all the authors!
• 01/2026: Our paper “Arthur: An Artificial Intelligence Powered Teaching Assistant System for Engineering Economics Class” has just been accepted by International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education and it is now published online. Stay tuned for the online version!
• 08/2025: Our paper “Enhanced global oil spill dataset from 1967 to 2023 based on text-form incident information” has been published online in Scientific Data.
• 06/2025: I joined Amazon as an applied scientist intern in NYC🗽.
• 05/2025: I will attend IISE annual conference 2025 and present three works.
• 04/2025: I received a Graduate Research Grant from Purdue’s Institute for a Sustainable Future (ISF) to support my research on assessing AI models’ carbon footprint.
• 04/2025: I have passed my Ph.D. prelim exam. Many thanks to my advisor and committee members for their continued support!
• 10/2024: I am honored to have been selected as a 2024–2025 IISE Future Faculty Fellow. I am fortunate to be paired with Prof. Uday Venkatadri as my mentor!
• 08/2024: I attend NSF Workshop on Sustainable Computng held at Purdue on Aug 20-21
• 10/2023: I received 2023-2024 Lee A. Chaden Fellowship in Industrial Engineering at Purdue.
• 09/2023: Purdue Today featured our story on Arthur, an AI-powered teaching assistant tool designed to support engineering education.
• 08/2023: I will be lecturing IE343 Engineering Economics with ~150 undergraduate students. Looking forward to the new semester!

💻 Internships

• 06/2025 - 09/2025, Amazon.com, Applied Scientist Intern, New York, NY.
  • Global Transportation Services, hosted by Dr. Golnush Amoli & Hana Ku
  • Developed Amazon’s next-generation AI-driven tools to advance resilient and dynamic transportation network design.
  • Led the full lifecycle from conceptualization, multi-source data analysis, large-scale simulation, AI model training, and minimum viable product delivery.

📝 Publications

• Just Accepted 2026 ViTSP: A Vision Language Models Guided Framework for Large-Scale Traveling Salesman Problems
  Zhuoli Yin, Yi Ding, Reem Khir, & Hua Cai 📄 Paper
  ICLR’26: The 14th International Conference on Learning Representations
• Just Accepted 2026 Arthur: An Artificial Intelligence Powered Teaching Assistant System for Engineering Economics Class
  Zhuoli Yin, Erhan Karakaya, Kalei Bass, & Hua Cai
  International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education. 2026.
• Preprint 2025 DeepBike: A Deep Reinforcement Learning Based Model for Large-scale Online Bike Share Rebalancing
  Zhuoli Yin, Zhaoyu Kou, & Hua Cai 📄 Paper
• Enhanced global oil spill dataset from 1967 to 2023 based on text-form incident information
  Yiming Liu, Zhuoli Yin, & Hua Cai
  Scientific Data, 12(1), 1-14. 2025. 📄 Paper
• Understanding the Demand Predictability of Bike Share Systems: A Station-Level Analysis
  Zhuoli Yin, Kendrick Hardaway, Yu Feng, Zhaoyu Kou, & Hua Cai
  Frontiers of Engineering Management, 1-15. 2023. 📄 Paper
• A Deep Reinforcement Learning Model for Large-Scale Dynamic Bike Share Rebalancing with Spatial-Temporal Context
  Zhuoli Yin, Zhaoyu Kou, & Hua Cai
  The 12th International Workshop on Urban Computing. 2023. 📄 Paper

🎖 Selected Awards

• 05/2025 IISE Doctoral Colloquium (3 participants nominated per department)
• 05/2025 NSF IISE Annual Conference Student Travel Award
• 10/2024 2024-2025 IISE Future Faculty Fellow (15 participants selected per year)
• 10/2023 2023-2024 Lee A. Chaden Fellowship in Industrial Engineering, Purdue University
• 05/2023 Graduate School Summer Research Grant, Purdue University
• 09/2022 Honorable Mention Poster Award, Purdue Engineering Graduate Showcase

📚 Teaching

• Graduate Lecturer, Purdue IE 343: Engineering Economics, Fall 2023 (150 students)
• Guest Lecturer, Purdue EEE 560: Environmental Data Science, Fall 2024
• Teaching Assistant, Purdue IE 343: Engineering Economics, Fall 2021 - Fall 2025 (10 sessions in total)
• Teaching Assistant, Purdue IE 590/EEE 595: Urban Mobility Optimization, Spring 2024

🔍 Mentorship

Undergraduate Students

• Laura Almeida Tinjaca (National University of Colombia-Purdue Program)
• Quan The Dinh (Purdue, Computer Science)
• Karen Fortunat (Purdue, Industrial Engineering)
• Kalei Bass (Purdue, Industrial Engineering)

💪 Services

Selected Internal Service at Purdue

• 10/2023 - 12/2023: Student representative on the faculty search committee
• 05/2022 - 05/2023: Vice President, Industrial Engineering Graduate Student Organization (IEGSO)

Selected External Service to Professional Societies

• 09/2023: Support team, 2023 Purdue Research Symposium on Operations
• 05/2022: Session chair, IISE Annual Conference & Expo 2022

Conference Reviewer

• Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting (TRB) 2026
• Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2025
• International Symposium for Sustainable Systems and Technology (ISSST) 2024

Journal Reviewer

• Journal of Cleaner Production
• Networks and Spatial Economics