Dr. Yao Zhao is a professor at the Department of Supply Chain Management at Rutgers – the State University of New Jersey. He is the co-director of the Supply Chain Analytics Lab at Rutgers. His research interests lie in Supply Chain Management and Analytics. He published on leading operations research and operations management journals such as Operations Research, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management (M&SOM), Production and Operations Management, and served as an associate editor for Operations Research and M&SOM. He is the recipient of the National Science Foundation Career Award on Manufacturing Enterprise Systems in 2008, and the Dean’s Research Professorship for 2019-2025.

He taught core operations, supply chain management and analytics courses at Rutgers, and won the 1st prize of INFORM Case Writing Competition in 2014, and the Dean’s Meritorious Teaching Award in 2016. His instructional game “Hunger Chain simulation” won DSJIE Best Teaching Brief award in 2021 and was selected as a finalist for the 2019 DSI Instructional Innovation competition. Modules of his electronic book in 2021, “Supply Chain Analytics: Cases, Games and Solutions”, have been adopted by 50+ instructors from 30+ universities in the US, UK, EU, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong as of January 2022, and benefited tens of thousands of students.

He consulted with companies and governmental agencies such as General Motors, Estee Lauder, Verizon, MTA – NY Transit, Special Olympics, Johnson and Johnson, Fannie Mae, Defense Logistics Agency and US Navy, Korean Air-Cargo, Robert Wood Johnson hospitals, and Water and Power Development Authority of Pakistan. His research was reported by industry media such as The European Business Review, Aviation Week & Space Technology, International Innovation and Pharmaceutical Executive.