Lavanya Marla

Timeline

1. 2004–2010

   Degrees from IIT Madras and MIT

   She earns a B.Tech. in civil engineering, with a minor in industrial engineering, at IIT Madras in 2004. At MIT, she completes a master's degree in transportation and operations research in 2007 and a PhD in transportation systems in 2010.

2. 2010–2012

   Mobility analytics at Carnegie Mellon

   From September 2010 to December 2012, she is a systems scientist and co-director of iLab Mobility Analytics at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College in Pittsburgh. In 2012, she coauthors an AAAI paper with Yisong Yue and Ramayya Krishnan on a simulation-based approach to ambulance allocation and dynamic redeployment.

3. 2013–2022

   Joining the Illinois faculty

   She joins the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as an assistant professor in January 2013. In August 2022, she becomes an associate professor with tenure.

4. 2019

   AI pricing for airline extras

   In 2019, she coauthors a study presented at the Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, in which a University of Illinois and Deepair Solutions team uses machine learning and deep neural networks to price checked bags and seats for individual airline customers. A six-month test with a European airline raises ancillary sales conversions by 17% and ancillary revenue per offer by 25%.

5. 2020

   Airline disruption recovery model

   In 2020, her Transportation Science paper with Alexandre Jacquillat and Jane Lee presents the Stochastic Reactive and Proactive Disruption Management model, which uses estimates of future disruptions to choose recovery actions for delayed flights. The model could cut airline recovery costs by 1% to 2%.

6. 2023

   A service systems engineering award

   In 2023, her team wins third place in the IISE Outstanding Innovation in Service Systems Engineering Award for a project that uses machine learning to personalize airline ancillary prices, tested live with a European airline. The models include a single-stage deep neural network that recommends the optimal price.

7. 2024–2026

   Launching the AI-SCORE school

   In April 2024, she announces AI-SCORE, the Artificial Intelligence School for Operations Research Education, for early doctoral students who can lead the next generation of AI and operations research. The first session is held at the University of Maryland College Park in May 2024, and in 2026 she co-chairs the second session at the Discovery Partners Institute in Chicago, which hosts 45 PhD students from 26 universities.

8. As of October 2026

   Illinois professor and IIT Madras fellow

   She is an associate professor of industrial and enterprise systems engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is also an Associate Research Fellow at RBCDSAI, listed among the faculty of the Wadhwani School of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at IIT Madras.