Chaofan Zhai

I am a Ph.D. Candidate in Information & Decision Sciences at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. My advisor is Professor Ravi Bapna.

I study AI-enabled decision-making from both a "how" perspective and a "what" perspective:

• Algorithmic Design ("How"): I develop and deploy innovative machine learning algorithms to address real-world challenges, such as learning design in online education, human-AI collaboration design in generative AI contexts, and matching design in multi-stakeholder marketplaces.
• Economic Impact("What"): I use field and online experiments to rigorously measure the real-world impact of these AI designs on individual decision quality and platform economic outcomes.

My aspiration is to conduct research that has a real impact on supporting individual and organizational decision-making.

HONORS AND AWARDS

• The Winner of WITS Best Dissertation Award (Dec 2024)
  • Dissertation: "Three Essays on Overcoming Cognitive Frictions in Online Education"
• Selected Participant for 2024 ICIS Doctoral Consortium (Aug 2024)
• Carlson School Dissertation Fellowship ($32,000) (April 2024)
• Dean's Small Grant for Research ($10,000) (Nov 2023)
• Carlson School of Management Ph.D. Student Teaching Award (August 2023)
• Ph.D. Student Conference/Travel Fellowship (2020 – Now)
• Carlson and Willoughby IDS Ph.D. Fellowship (2020 – Now)
• Ph.D. Student Summer Research Fellowship (2020 – Now)

Working Papers

• Chaofan Zhai, Ravi Bapna, Alok Gupta, "Human-Generative AI Collaboration in Business Analytics Problem Solving: A Large-Scale Online Experiment"
  • Google Cloud Research Credit, 2024
• Chaofan Zhai, Yicheng Song, Ravi Bapna, "Reinforcement Learning for Sustainable Learning in Online Education: A Large-scale Field Experiment"
  • Workshop on Information Technologies and Systems (WITS), Bangkok, 2024
  • Statistical Challenges in Electronic Commerce Research (SCECR), Lisbon, 2024
  • Production and Operations Management Society (POMS) Minneapolis, 2024
  • INFORMS Annual Conference, Seattle, 2024
  • Carlson School Dean's Small Grant ($10,000), 2023
• Chaofan Zhai, Xuan Bi, Angela Aerry Choi, Chad Yi-Chun Ho, "A Customer-Aware Recommender System for Influencer Marketing: A Large-scale Field Experiment"
  • Statistical Challenges in Electronic Commerce Research (SCECR), Cyprus, 2025
• Chaofan Zhai, Amit Mehra, Ravi Bapna, "Pricing Strategies in Online Education"
  • Conference on Information Systems and Technology (CIST), Indianapolis, 2022
• Chaofan Zhai, Xuan Bi, Mochen Yang, "Incentivization of Federated Learning: A Novel Stackelberg Game"
  • INFORMS Annual Conference, Indianapolis, 2022