About me

Hola 👋

I am a final-year PhD Candidate in Operations Research at MIT, working with Georgia Perakis. My research focuses on retail operations management, integrating principles from operations management, optimization, and machine learning to address the complexities of the retail sector. I am particularly interested in studying how the retailer’s optimal policies are impacted by different factors such as complementarity and substitution cross-item effects, and manager and customer behavior.

Prior to MIT, I worked for five years in industry as a Data Scientist in the areas of marketing mix and attribution modeling, retail location analytics, and fintech.

My research interests include:

• Retail Operations Management
• Optimization
• Machine Learning
• Reinforcement Learning

Papers

\(\dagger\)Listed in order of contribution
\(\ddagger\)Listed in alphabetical order of last name

• Moran-Pelaez M.\(\dagger\), Cohen-Hillel T., Fernandez-de-Castro B. (collaborator at Zara), and Perakis, G., 2024. Manager Behavior in the Product Replacement Problem: Addressing Preferences and Uncertainty. under review at Management Science
  • Accepted to the Supply Chain Management SIG at MSOM 2024.
• Moran-Pelaez M.\(\dagger\), and Perakis, G., 2024. A Robust Optimization Approach to Assortment Planning with Cross-Item Effects. soon to be submitted to Management Science
• Moran-Pelaez M.\(\dagger\), Dzimah S., and Perakis, G., 2024. Understanding Cannibalization and Complementarity in Demand through Transformers. soon to be submitted to Management Science.
• Cohen-Hillel T., Moran-Pelaez M.\(\ddagger\), Perakis, G., Schoess, D., 2024. A Multimodal Neural Network Approach to Demand Modeling: Capturing Cross-Item Effects and Returns. soon to be submitted to Operations Research.
• Moran-Pelaez M.\(\dagger\), Perakis, G., and collaborators from InstaDeep, 2024. Dynamic Policies for Combinatorial Problems in Operations: Adapting to New Structural Constraints. work in progress.

Honors and Awards

• MIT Sloan Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award (2024)
• MIT Graduate Student Council Teaching Award for the Sloan School of Management (2024)
• Ramón Areces Fellowship for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences (2023 – 2025)
• Kaggle Bronze Medal and 1st place in ORC’s Common Experience NLP Challenge (Summer 2022)
• La Caixa Fellowship for Graduate Studies in Asia and North America (2021 – 2023)
• JAE Intro Grant from the Spanish CSIC (2015)
• Undergraduate Research Scholarship from the Ministry of Education of Spain (2015)
• Academic Excellence Award from Community of Madrid (2011, 2012, 2013)

Teaching Experience

• MIT Sloan, 15.730 Data, Models, and Decisions, Head Teaching Assistant (Spring 2024), overall rating: 6.84/7.0
• MIT Sloan, Introduction to Python Tutorial for EMBA students, Instructor (Spring 2024)
• MIT Sloan, Introduction to Excel Tutorial for EMBA students, Instructor (Spring 2024)
• MIT Sloan, 15.774/780 Analytics of Operations Management, Head Teaching Assistant (Fall 2023), overall rating: 6.8/7.0
• MIT Sloan, 15.730 Data, Models, and Decisions, Teaching Assistant (Spring 2023), overall rating: 6.74/7.0

• MIT Sloan, Introduction to Excel Tutorial for EMBA students, Instructor (Spring 2023)

• MIT Sloan, Visiting Student Program, Research Mentor (2023-2024)
• MIT Sloan, Master of Business Analytics Research Assistant Program, Research Mentor (2021-2024)

• MIT Sloan, 15.089 Analytics Capstone, Research Advisor (Spring/Summer 2022)

• Conento Decision Science, Internship Tutor and Master’s Thesis Advisor (Spring 2018)

Professional Experience

• InstaDeep (currently part of BioNTech) (Summer 2021)
  Research Science Intern, Cambridge, MA

• Capchase (New York-based fintech startup) (2020 – 2021)
  Lead Data Scientist, Madrid, Spain

• Geoblink (Spanish location intelligence startup) (2018 – 2020)
  Senior Data Scientist, Madrid, Spain

• Conento Decision Science (currently part of Deloitte) (2017 – 2018)
  Senior Data Analyst, Madrid, Spain

Leadership, Service, and Outreach

• Coordinator of the ORC IAP Seminar, MIT ORC (Winter 2023)
• INFORMS Officer of INFORMS student chapter, MIT (2021-2022)
• Founder and Leader of the Tech Brand Awareness Committee, Geoblink-Madrid (2018-2020)
• Founder and Mentor of the Machine Learning Club, Conento-Madrid (2017-2018)