Prof. SI Nian Awarded Funding in France-Hong Kong ANR/RGC Joint Research Scheme 2025/26

A project led by Prof. SI Nian, Assistant Professor of the Department of Industrial Engineering and Decision Analytics, was awarded HK$1.6 million under the French National Research Agency (ANR) / Research Grants Council (RGC) Joint Research Scheme 2025/26.

Prof. Si will collaborate with Prof. Julien GRAND-CLÉMENT from École des hautes études commerciales de Paris to work on their project titled “Statistical Guarantees for Uncertainty Set Selection in Distributionally Robust Sequential Decision-Making”. The project will be funded for three years, from 2026 to 2028.

Run by the French National Research Agency (Agence Nationale de la Recherche) and the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong, the Joint Research Scheme aims to strengthen collaboration between the French and Hong Kong research communities. Among the four selected projects this year, two were led by HKUST faculty, including Prof. Si and School of Science faculty member Prof. Julian MAK.

Prof. Si Nian joined HKUST in 2024. Previously, he was a postdoctoral principal researcher at the University of Chicago. He obtained his PhD in Operations Research (2023) from Stanford University and his BA in Economics and BS in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics (2017) from Peking University. His research lies at the interface of operations research, statistics, and machine learning.