Dr. Zhaonan Qu is a Postdoctoral Research Scientist in the Data Science Institute, where he is part of the 7th cohort of the DSI Postdoctoral Fellows Program. His research interests are at the intersection of operations research, econometrics, and data science, with a focus on causal inference, optimization, and choice modeling. 

Under the guidance of Professor Agostino Capponi and Professor Sokbae (Simon) Lee, Dr. Qu’s research at the Data Science Institute will leverage connections and interactions between these topics to develop innovative methodologies aimed at benefiting the data science community, including principled frameworks for modeling data with non-negative response variables, causal inference methods based on robustness principles, and network inference methods for transportation and supply chain networks.

Before joining Columbia University in July 2024, Dr. Qu received his PhD in Economics from Stanford University, where he was advised by Professor Guido Imbens and Yinyu Ye. He also received an MA in Mathematics from the Courant Institute at New York University and a BA also in Mathematics from Princeton University.