Rate My Professor Lei Lei

Lei Lei is Professor and Dean of Rutgers Business School at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey's Newark and New Brunswick campuses in the Business & Economics faculty, with expertise in Supply Chain Management. She received her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1989, with a minor in Computer Science, and her M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Dalian University of Technology in 1983. Appointed Dean effective January 2015, she previously served as founding Chair of the Supply Chain Management department from 2008. Her research specializations encompass supply chain network design and optimization, operations planning and scheduling, process recovery after disruptions, demand-supply planning, and resource allocation optimization. Lei Lei has produced over 50 refereed publications, including the book "Managing Supply Chain Operations" (World Scientific, 2017, co-authored with L. DeCandia, R. Oppenheim, and Y. Zhou); "Coordinating Supplier Selection and Project Scheduling in Resource-Constrained Construction Supply Chains" (International Journal of Production Research, 2018, with W. Chen, Z. Wang, M. Teng, and J. Liu); "Supply Chain Flexibility and Operations Optimisation Under Demand Uncertainty: A Case in Disaster Relief" (International Journal of Production Research, 2018, with J. M. Song and W. Chen); "A Heuristic for Emergency Operations Scheduling with Lead Times and Hardiness Penalties" (European Journal of Operational Research, 2016, with K. Lee and H. Dong); and "Personnel scheduling and supplies provisioning in emergency relief operations" (Annals of Operations Research, 2015, with M. Pinedo, L. Qi, S. Wang, and J. Yang).

Lei Lei's scholarly impact is evidenced by major grants, including a $524,625 U.S. Department of Homeland Security award (Principal Investigator, 2011-2013), a $350,000 HDMA Research Grant (2006), and a U.S. Air Force research grant ($50,000, 1998-1999). She has received numerous honors, such as NJBIZ Top 50 Women in Business (2015, 2023), ROI-NJ Influencers (2021, 2022, 2023, including Higher Education and People of Color categories), NJ Difference Makers (2020), 2023 Distinguished Achievement Award from the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering, New Jersey Bright Idea Awards in Operations Management and Decision Sciences (2009) for "A zero-inventory production and distribution problem with a fixed customer-sequence" and "Scheduling Vessels and Container-Yard Operations with Conflicting Objectives," semi-finalist for the INFORMS Franz Edelman Award (2002), Best Professor Award (2000), and multiple Rutgers teaching awards including Professor of the Year (1998-1999), Nadler Teaching Award (1990), and Outstanding Teacher Award (1990).