Selva: Main

Selvaprabu (Selva) Nadarajah
Email: selvan@uic.edu

I am an Associate Professor (with tenure) of Information and Decision Sciences and Bielinski Family Endowed Scholar at the College of Business Administration, University of Illinois at Chicago. I also serve as the Decision Intelligence R&D Lead at the Discovery Partners Institute (Innovation hub of the University of Illinois System), and work with Argonne National Laboratory. My research areas include (see this link for more details):

The solution of large scale Markov decision processes using math programming based reinforcement learning, data-driven methods, and algorithms that embed solve intelligence.

The operations, valuation, and risk management of commodity and energy conversion assets (e.g., production, storage, and transport), including renewable energy.

The role of corporations in the clean energy transition, the social impact of this transition, and the interplay between financial and social objectives in supply chains.

I have been fortunate to be recognized as a Global Scholar for international research, scholarship, and creative activity by the University of Illinois Chicago in 2024, and receive the 2024 INFORMS Harvey J. Greenberg Research Award, the 2021 Commodity and Energy Markets Association (CEMA) Best Paper Award, the 2020 INFORMS ENRE Young Researcher Prize, the Best Overall Paper at the 2020 NeurIPS Workshop on Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning, the 2014 William L. Cooper Dissertation Award, and the 2013 Egon Balas Best Paper Award.

Note to Collaborators: I welcome collaborations from both academia and industry. Feel free to email me. If you are a graduate student (Masters or PhD) interested in working with me, please read this link before sending an email.

About me: Before joining UIC, I did my PhD and MS in Operations Research at the Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University. My journey to North America started at the University of Waterloo, where I obtained an MASc in Operations Research and learnt the importance of asking "Why Not?".

I was born in incredible India and grew up in the beautiful island of Sri Lanka (a.k.a. the pearl of the Indian ocean) before heading back to Chennai for my undergraduate studies at the Indian Institue of Technology Madras. I have enjoyed consulting with companies in the retail, high technology, and energy industries along the way.