Publications

Working Papers

1. AI as Flesh, OM as Bone: Semiparametric Regression with Deep Neural Networks

   Ming Hu^*, Xiaotian Liu^* and Guohao Shen^*

   Under revision (previous decision: reject and resubmit) at Manufacturing & Service Operations Management (UTD24), 2026 HTML
2. Learning Meets Convex Structure: Offline Approximation for Inventory Control

   Xiaotian Liu, Christos Alexopoulos and Edwin Romeijn

   Under review at Production and Operations Management (UTD24), 2026 HTML

   • Appeared in 2025 SSRN Top-10 Download List for Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering

Journal Papers

1. Production Planning with Markovian Production Relationships

   Xiaotian Liu, Christos Alexopoulos, Yijie Peng and Cheng Zhang

   Production and Operations Management (UTD24), 2026 DOI
2. Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning for Multi-Echelon Inventory Management

   Xiaotian Liu, Ming Hu, Yijie Peng and Yaodong Yang

   Production and Operations Management (UTD24), 2025 DOI

   • Production and Operations Management 2023-2026 Top-20 Most Cited Paper (Journal Official Ranking)

   • The Only AI-Related Paper in The Top-20 Citation List
3. An Efficient Node Selection Policy for Monte Carlo Tree Search with Neural Networks

   Xiaotian Liu, Yijie Peng, Gongbo Zhang and Ruihan Zhou

   INFORMS Journal on Computing (UTD24), 2025 DOI

   • INFORMS Journal on Computing Meritorious Paper

   • The Only Awardee in 2024; The First Time This Award Was Presented to a Chinese Research Team
4. A Simulation-Driven Machine Learning Framework for Large-Scale Inventory Management

   Xiaotian Liu, Christos Alexopoulos and Yijie Peng

   Annals of Operations Research (ABS3), 2025 DOI

Conference Papers

1. A Unified Framework for Multi-Stage Decision Optimization with Deep Reinforcement Learning and Foundation Models

   Qinghao Wang, Jinyang Jiang, Xiaotian Liu, Tao Ren, Yi Zheng, Cheng Zhang, Yaodong Yang and Yijie Peng

   In 2025 IEEE 21st International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering, 2025 HTML
2. A Simulation Optimization Method for Scheduling Automated Guided Vehicles in a Stochastic Warehouse Management System

   Gongbo Zhang, Xiaotian Liu and Yijie Peng

   In 2023 Winter Simulation Conference, 2023 HTML

   • Second Place Winning Method in the 2022 Winter Simulation Conference Case Study Competition.
3. MA-ResNet50: A General Encoder Network for Video Segmentation

   Xiaotian Liu, Lei Yang, Xiaoyu Zhang and Xiaohui Duan

   In VISAPP, 2022 PDF

Work in Progress

1. Adaptive Deployment of Black-Box Inventory Policies in Nonstationary Environments

   Xiaotian Liu, Christos Alexopoulos and Edwin Romeijn

   2026