Sikai Cheng | Georgia Institute of Technology

About Me

I am a Ph.D. student in Machine Learning at the Georgia Institute of Technology, advised by Prof. Pascal Van Hentenryck. My research focuses on machine learning and its integration with optimization. I have made several successful attempts in applying these methods to large-scale transportation systems, wireless communications, and robust decision-making under uncertainty. In addition, I explore the reasoning capabilities of large language models and investigate reinforcement learning approaches for multi-agent systems. [Google Scholar]

Before beginning my Ph.D., I earned a Master’s degree in Operations Research from the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) at Georgia Tech, and a Bachelor’s degree in Data Science from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen.

I have been fortunate to collaborate with Prof. Xin Chen during my master’s studies, as well as Dr. Xinyun Chen and Dr. Pengyi Shi during my undergraduate studies.

Publications

Manuscript under review

DualSchool: How reliable are LLMs for optimization education?

Klamkin, M., Deza, A., Cheng, S., Zhao, H., & Van Hentenryck, P.

Manuscript under review, 2025.

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ICDM

SPOT: Spatio-Temporal Pattern Mining and Optimization for Load Consolidation in Freight Transportation Networks

Cheng, S., Hijazi, A., Konak, J., Erera, A., & Van Hentenryck, P.

Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM), 2025.

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M&SOM

Contextual stochastic optimization for omnichannel multi-courier order fulfillment under delivery time uncertainty

Ye, T., Cheng, S., Hijazi, A., & Van Hentenryck, P.

Manufacturing & Service Operations Management (M&SOM), 2025. Finalist, M&SOM Practice-based Research Competition.

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NeurIPS Workshop

Emergent collective intelligence from massive-agent cooperation and competition

Chen, H., Tao, S., Chen, J., Shen, W., Li, X., Yu, C., Cheng, S., Zhu, X., & Li, X.

NeurIPS 2022 Deep RL Workshop, 2023.

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Misc.

I’ve always loved sports 🤸. I practiced wrestling 🤼 and powerlifting 🏋️ with full passion, got hit with some major injuries 😅, fought my way back 💪, and—no surprise—I still can’t stay away from sports. These days I enjoy trying all kinds of activities — archery 🏹, bowling 🎳, paddleboarding 🏄, and regular gym training 💪. I’ve also wrestled with attention and reading/writing disorders for years, collecting tons of practical tips (happy to share ✍️✨). Since GPT arrived, my writing block has basically vanished — thanks, GPT 🤖❤️. And honestly, I like many kinds of noise, just like this “noisy” sentence 🎶😜.