Mohammed Amine Bennouna

About me

I am a 3rd year doctoral candidate at the MIT Operations Research Center, advised by Prof. B. Van Parys. Prior to joining MIT, I graduated from Ecole Polytechnique in 2019 Majoring in Applied Mathematics and completed two years of preparatory program (CPGE) in Lycée Louis-le-Grand.

My research interest lies in data-driven decision-making. I strive to understand theoretically how to use most efficiently observed data to make decisions. The goal is to derive from these theoretical insights novel algorithms that tackle unsolved challenges in data-driven decision-making. So far in my PhD, I have worked in dynamic decision-making (Reinforcement Learning) to introduce a novel more efficient off-line RL framework. I have also worked on designing decision-making schemes, using Distributionally Robust Optimization , that are provably optimal (i.e the best that can be done with the data) when a certain out-of-sample guarantee is desired. Finally, I worked on analyzing the representation power of neural networks and contributing to explain theoretically why neural networks work so well in data-driven prediction.

---

Papers

• Learning and Decision-Making with Data: Optimal Formulations and Phase Transitions (See)
  with Bart Van Parys. Working Paper.
• Learning the Minimal Representation of a Dynamic System from Transition Data (See)
  with Dessislava Pachamanova, Georgia Perakis & Omar Skali Lami. 2021. Submitted.
• The Representation Power of Neural Networks: Breaking the Curse of Dimensionality (See)
  with Moise Blanchard. 2021. Submitted.
  MIT SIAM student seminar talk: (video)
• The Power of Analytics in Epidemiology for COVID-19: Prediction, Prevalence and Vaccine Allocation
  with Georgia Perakis et al. Minor Revision in MSOM.
  Finalist of INFORMS Doing Good with Good OR 2021; INFORMS ICSS Best Conference Paper Award 2021
• Near Optimal Tractable Threshold Policies for Two-stage Robust Optimization Problems
  with Omar El Housni & Vineet Goyal. Working Paper.
  Winner of Ecole Polytechnique’s 1st Prize of research internship in Applied Mathematics.

---

Research Projects

• Complexity of Interior-point Algorithms: Tropical Computations (see)
  with Yassine El Maazouz, Stéphane Gaubert & Xavier Allamigeon. 2018.
  This work is the continuity of the following paper: Log-Barrier Interior Point Methods Are Not Strongly Polynomial.
• On Random Minimal Factorizations of Large n-cycles (see)
  with Yassine El Maazouz & Igor Kortchemski. 2019.
• Simulating Rare Events with Hawkes Processes (see)
  with Yassine El Maazouz, Emmanuel Gobet & Martin Bompaire. 2018.

---

Teaching

• Teaching Assistant, MIT
  15.093/6.255 Optimization Methods, Graduate (Masters, PhDs, MBAn, MBA & others), Fall 2021. (240 students)
• Teaching Assistant, MIT
  15.093/6.255 Optimization Methods, Graduate (Masters, PhDs, MBAn, MBA & others), Fall 2020. (125 students)
• Instructor, Mathematical Olympiad
  President of the Moroccan Mathematical Olympiad society. (2016-2019)
• Instructor, Institut Bossuet
  Instructor in advanced mathematics for undergraduate students of top french classes préparatoire.

---

Talks

Minimal Representation Learning: Toward more Interpretable and Efficient Offline Reinforcement Learning
Past: INFORMS annual meeting November 2020; ORC Student Seminar Series April 2021; MSOM Conference June 2021; INFORMS Healthcare Conference July 21st 2021
Upcoming: INFORMS annual meeting October 2021
The Representation Power of Neural Networks
Past: MIT SIAM student seminar December 2020; ORC Student Seminar Series March 2021
Learning and Decision-Making with Data: Optimal Formulations and Phase Transitions
Past: ORC Student Seminar Series October 2021
Upcoming: INFORMS annual meeting October 2021