Hamsa Bastani

Hamsa Bastani is an Assistant Professor of Operations, Information, and Decisions at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on developing novel machine learning algorithms for data-driven decision-making, with applications to healthcare operations, social good, and revenue management. She designs methods for sequential decision-making (bandits, reinforcement learning, active learning) and leveraging auxiliary data sources (transfer learning, meta-learning). She also works on using novel, unstructured data sources to inform policy problems, and improving the human-AI interface through large-scale behavioral experiments. Her work has received several recognitions, including the Wagner Prize for Excellence in Practice (2021), the Pierskalla Award for the best paper in healthcare (2016, 2019, 2021), the Behavioral OM Best Paper Award (2021), as well as first place in the George Nicholson and MSOM student paper competitions (2016).