Nicholas Renegar, PhD

I am currently a Research Affiliate at MIT's Sinskey Lab working on applications of AI and machine learning to complex problems in biotechnology and sustainability and also run an independent consulting business in these areas. My interests also include game theory, mechanism design, and quantitative finance.

I received my Ph.D. in Operations Research from MIT's Sloan School of Management, where I was advised by Professor Retsef Levi. During my Ph.D., I was a member of MIT’s Operations Research Center, as well as MIT’s Food Supply Chain Analytics and Sensing (FSAS) Initiative. My thesis work leveraged big data and predictive analytics to guide food safety regulatory policy in the US and China, as well as applications of machine learning product and process development for biotechnology. During my Ph.D. I did independent research in game theory and algorithms, including work on mechanism design for Google Search Ads.

Boston, MA
Contact: nicholas(dot)renegar📧 gmail.com

Experience

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Research Affiliate (Jun '23 — )

Renegar Analytics, LLC

Principal (Jun '23 — )

Yield10 Bioscience

Director, Business Analytics & Operations (Jun '21 —May '23)
Business development, business analytics, data science, and supply chain development

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Research & Teaching Assistant (Sep '16 — Jun '21)
Research: Predictive Analytics and Machine Learning for the Risk-Based Management of Agricultural Supply Chains
Teaching: MBA and executive MBA courses at MIT's Sloan School of Management, including operations and risk management.

Google

PhD Research Intern (Jun '19 — Aug '19)
Mechanism design and auction theory for Google Search ads.

Milliman, Inc.

Consulting Analyst (Healthcare) (Jul '10 — Oct '15)
Predictive analytics to help healthcare organizations plan for the future. Financial modeling and revenue/funding models as well as high-value commercial software development.

Education

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Ph.D., Operations Research (Sep '16 — Jun '21)
GPA: 5.0/5.0

Cornell University

B.A. & B.Sc. (Dual Degree Program) Mathematics, Operations Research (Sep '06 — May '10)
Magna Cum Laude

Selected Research

Machine Learning for the Discovery of Molecular Recognition Based on Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Corona-Phases
X. Gong*, N. Renegar*, R. Levi, and M. Strano
npj Computational Materials, Jun. 2022.
[Nature]

Testing at the Source: Analytics-Enabled Risk-Based Sampling of Food Supply Chains in China
C. Jin, R. Levi, Q. Liang, N. Renegar*, S. Springs, J. Zhou, and W. Zhou
Management Science, Jan. 2021.
[INFORMS]

Food Safety Inspection and the Adoption of Traceability in Aquatic Wholesale Markets: A Game Theoretic Model and Empirical Evidence
C. Jin*, R. Levi, Q. Liang*, N. Renegar, and J. Zhou
Journal of Integrative Agriculture, 2021.
[ScienceDirect]

Public Health Risks Arising from Food Supply Chains: Challenges and Opportunities
L. Chen, D. Guttieres, R. Levi, E. Paulson*, G. Perakis, N. Renegar*, S. Springs
Naval Research Logistics, Dec. 2021.
[Wiley]

The Second-Price Knapsack Problem: Near-Optimal Real Time Bidding in Internet Advertisement
J. Amar*, N. Renegar*.
MIT ORC Best Student Paper Award, 2020.
[arXiv]

Supply Chain Network Analytics Guiding Food Regulatory Operational Policy
R. Levi, N. Renegar*, S. Springs, and T. Zaman
Major Revision at Operations Research, 2021.
[SSRN]

Leveraging Data Science to Assess Market-level Food Safety and Zoonotic Disease Outbreak Risks in China
J. Gao*, R. Levi, N. Renegar*
[SSRN]

See Google Scholar for other references.
Most papers use alphabetical ordering - asterix indicates "first" author.