About

I am an Assistant Professor at the NYU Stern School of Business in Abu Dhabi, and a research affiliate of the MIT Sloan School of Management. I completed my PhD in Operations Research from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

My research addresses the challenges of climate adaptation and sustainable development through technological innovation. I specialize in developing artificial intelligence solutions to forecast and manage extreme weather events. My PhD thesis, titled “Multimodal Machine Learning for Climate Adaptation”, includes selected works on hurricanes prediction, flood prediction, near-term wind prediction, and flood insurance pricing.

In addition to academic pursuits, I gained valuable industry experience as a quantitative analyst at BlackRock Systematic Equities, generating alpha signals using data science; at the SoftBank Vision Fund, focusing on late-stage investments in AI tech unicorns. I hold a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Imperial College London.

Finally, I document some random thoughts in writings ...

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Publications

• Hurricane Forecasting: A Novel Multimodal Machine Learning Framework
  L. Boussioux*, C. Zeng*, T. Guénais, D. Bertsimas
  Weather and Forecasting, 37(6), 817-831 (2022)
  Appeared at NeurIPS, Tackling Climate Change with AI, 2021 (spotlight talk)
• Integrated Multimodal Artificial Intelligence Framework for Healthcare Applications
  L. Soenksen*, Y. Ma*, C. Zeng*, L. Boussioux*, K. Carballo*, I. Na*, H. Wiberg, M. Li, I. Fuentes, D. Bertsimas
  npj Nature Digital Medicine, 2022, 5 (1), 1-10 (2022)
• From Predictions to Prescriptions: A Data-Driven Response to COVID-19
  (alphabetical) D. Bertsimas, L. Boussioux, R. Cory Wright, A. Delarue, V. Digalakis Jr., A. Jacquillat, et. al.
  Health Care Management Science, 24, 253–272 (2020)
  INFORMS Pierskalla Best Paper Award, 2020
• Combining Social, Environmental and Design Models to Support the Sustainable Development Goals
  J. Reed, C. Zeng*, D. Wood
  2019 IEEE Aerospace Conference

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Preprints

• Catastrophe Insurance: A Robust Optimization Approach
  D. Bertsimas, C. Zeng*
  In preparation for Manufacturing & Services Operations Management
• Reducing Air Pollution through Machine Learning
  (alphabetical) D. Bertsimas, L. Boussioux, C. Zeng*
  In preparation for INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics
  2nd Place for INFORMS Doing Good with Good OR Award, 2023
• TabText: a Systematic Approach to Aggregate Knowledge Across Tabular Data Structures
  D. Bertsimas, K. Carballo, Y. Ma, I. Na, L. Boussioux, C. Zeng*, L. Soenksen, I. Fuentes
  In preparation for Nature Machine Intelligence
• Global Flood Prediction: a Multimodal Machine Learning Approach
  C. Zeng*, D. Bertsimas
  Appeared at ICLR, Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning Workshop (2023)
• Climate Resilience with AI-Powered Weather Forecast
  C. Zeng*
  Honoary mention of the MIT Envisioning the Future of Computing Prize (2024)

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Selected Talks

Public
• TEDx Boston "Why You Should be a Weather Person?" Mar. 2024
• Stanford Energy Seminar "Multimodal Machine Learning and Climate Change Adaptation" Feb. 2024
• NYUAD Institute Public Lecture "Multimodal Machine Learning and Climate Change Adaptation" Nov. 2024
  
  Academic Conference
• ''Catastrophe Insurance: an Adpative Robust Optimization Approach'', INFORMS, Oct. 2023
• ''Reducing Air Pollution through Machine Learning'', INFORMS MSOM, Jun. 2023
• ''Multimodal Machine Learning for Hurricane Forecasting'', INFORMS, Oct. 2022

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Industry Experience

• BlackRock Inc.
  Summer Research Associate
  Jun. - Aug. 2022
  San Francisco (USA)
• SoftBank Vision Fund
  Investment Analyst
  Feb. - Jul. 2019
  Shanghai (China)
• BlackRock Inc.
  Investment Analyst
  Jul. 2017 - Jul. 2018
  London (UK)

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Volunteering

• Himalaya Spirit Academy
  Teacher for english, maths, science for students from grade 1 to grade 5. Scholarship sponsor of one student.
  Nepal, Jul. - Aug. 2015
• Shan Shui Environmental Conservation Center
  Marketing intern for social enterprise "Panda Honey", product made to encourage and preserve the panda habitat in Sichuan province.
  Beijing (China), Jun. - Aug. 2014
• Goat Cheese Farm
  Bretagne (France), Dec. 2015
• Eco Rice Farm
  Taiwan , Jul. 2014
• FETCH! Animal Shelter Club
  Founder and leader of the FETCH! club to volunteer at animal shelter at my high school. Organised weekly visits of small student groups, and fundraising events.
  Beijing (China), 2012 - 2014