Lily Xu
Sun-Wu Assistant Professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
Lily Xu's research develops AI methods across machine learning, optimization, and causal inference for planetary health challenges, with a focus on biodiversity conservation.
She aims to enable practitioners to make effective decisions in the face of limited data, taking actions that are robust to uncertainty, effective at scale, and future-looking. She partners closely with NGOs and interdisciplinary researchers to bridge research and practice, serving as AI Lead for the SMART Partnership for wildlife conservation and Scientific Advisor to INVERSA for invasive species management.
Since 2020, she co-organizes the EAAMO research initiative, committed to advancing Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms, and Optimization. Lily holds a PhD in computer science from Harvard University, and her research has been recognized with best paper runner-up at AAAI, the INFORMS Doing Good with Good OR award, a Google PhD Fellowship, a Siebel Scholarship, and AAMAS best dissertation runner-up.
Lily received her PhD in computer science from Harvard University in 2024 and was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Oxford with the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery from 2024-2025.
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Professional Experience
- Sun-Wu Assistant Professor, Columbia University, 2025-
- Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Oxford, 2024-2025
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Professional Affiliations
- Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)
- Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms, and Optimization (EAAMO)
- Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)
- Society for Conservation Biology (SCB)
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Honors & Awards
- IFAAMAS Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award Runner-Up, 2024
- Siebel Scholar, 2024
- Rising Star in Data Science, UChicago, 2023
- Rising Star in EECS, GATech, 2023
- Rising Star in Management Science and Engineering, Stanford MS&E, 2023
- Google PhD Fellowship, 2022 INFORMS Doing Good with Good OR Award, 2021
- AAAI Best Paper Award Runner Up, 2021
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Education
- PhD, Computer Science, Harvard University
- AB, Computer Science and Hispanic Studies, Dartmouth College