Abhay Sobhanan

Curriculum vitae

Appointments

  1. 2025–

    Assistant Professor, Decision Sciences Area

    Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

  2. 2025–

    IIMB Young Faculty Research Chair

    Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

  3. 2021–2025

    Graduate Research and Teaching Assistant

    Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering, University of South Florida

  4. 2019–2020

    Research Associate, Production & Quantitative Methods Area

    Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad

  5. 2016

    Mitacs Globalink Research Intern

    Department of Mathematics & Statistics, University of Regina, Canada

Education

  1. 2025

    PhD in Industrial Engineering

    University of South Florida, USA

    Advisors: Hadi Gard and Changhyun Kwon

  2. 2019

    BS–MS dual degree in Mathematics

    National Institute of Technology Agartala, India

    Visiting student at the Department of Mathematics, Central University of Kerala (Winter 2016), and the C. R. Rao Advanced Institute of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, Hyderabad (Summer 2016)

Research grants

  1. 2026

    Falcon's Heist: Airborne Traveling Thief Problem

    IIMB Challenge Grant. Principal Investigator, ongoing.

    Related: Drive, Pack, Fly: The Travelling Thief Problem with Drone

  2. 2026

    Neural-Guided Solvers for Large-Scale Combinatorial Optimization Problems

    ANRF Prime Minister Early Career Research Grant. Principal Investigator, ongoing.

  3. 2025

    Dynamic Charging for Order-Picking Devices in Automated Warehouses

    IIMB Research Seed Grant. Principal Investigator, ongoing.

    Related: Deep Reinforcement Learning for Dynamic Battery Management of Autonomous Order Pickers

Awards and honors

  1. 2025

    Summer Dissertation Completion Fellowship

    Office of Graduate Studies, University of South Florida

    Awarded in recognition of academic excellence; includes a $10,000 stipend and coverage of tuition, fees and health insurance.

  2. 2024

    IISE Best Paper Award Finalist, Operations Research Division

    For A branch-and-price algorithm for emergency humanitarian logistics with a mixed truck-drone fleet, with Sasan Mahmoudinazlou, Hadi Charkhgard and Changhyun Kwon

  3. 2024

    International Travel Grant

    Office of Graduate Studies, University of South Florida

    To present at the IISE Annual Conference & Expo 2024

  4. 2023

    PhD Student Travel Grant, U.S. National Science Foundation

    To attend the INFORMS TSL Conference 2023, Chicago

  5. 2020–2021

    USF Graduate Fellowship

    Awarded to selected first-year graduate students

  6. 2016

    Mitacs Globalink Research Internship

    Scholarship from Mitacs promoting research among undergraduate students

Consulting

  1. 2021

    Consultant, Cobblestone Milk Cooperative

    Developed optimization software for milk transportation logistics in Julia, with Sasan Mahmoudinazlou and Changhyun Kwon.

Service

  1. Peer reviewer

    Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting, Transportation Research Record, Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, IISE Annual Meeting 2024, Optimization Letters

  2. 2023–2024

    Tutor, Giunta Middle School, Tampa

    Through the Bright Young Minds Alliance at the University of South Florida

  3. 2022

    Session Chair, Routing and Consolidation Issues in Logistics

    INFORMS Annual Meeting, Indianapolis

  4. 2022

    Professional Chair, Tau Beta Pi, Florida Gamma Chapter

  5. 2021–2023

    Student Officer, INFORMS Student Chapter at the University of South Florida