Cynthia Zeng
NYU Stern School of Business in Abu Dhabi
Email: cz938 (at) nyu (dot) edu
Google Scholar
Linkedin
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.
You can find detailed experience and achievements in Short CV and Long CV.
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
Preprints
-
Catastrophe Insurance: A Robust Optimization Approach
D. Bertsimas, C. Zeng*
In preparation for Management Science
-
Reducing Air Pollution through Machine Learning
(alphabetical) D. Bertsimas, L. Boussioux, C. Zeng*
In preparation for Manufacturing & Services Operations Management
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)
Talks
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
Others
- TEDx Boston "Why You Should be a Weather Person?" Mar. 2024
- Stanford Energy Seminar "Multimodal Machine Learning and Climate Change Adaptation" Feb. 2024
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)
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