Yikai Zhang

Yikai Zhang, a 2025 Graduate Summer Fellow at the Boston University Institute for Global Sustainability (IGS), is a PhD student in the Operations and Technology Management department at the Questrom School of Business. Zhang holds a Master of Analytics degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Economics from UC San Diego. Her professional experience includes consulting in the energy sector, financial services, and media analytics. Her research focuses on data-driven and optimization approaches to sustainable infrastructure and service operations.

As an IGS Graduate Student Summer Fellow, she will research how data-informed queueing models can guide capacity planning and congestion mitigation in electric vehicle (EV) charging systems. She plans to model congestion and capacity management in EV charging networks using queueing theory and simulation tools, with the goal of optimizing infrastructure expansion and reducing environmental externalities caused by long wait times and inefficient station distribution. Her project integrates empirical data from local charging stations with theoretical models to evaluate and forecast system performance under various policy interventions. Her faculty advisors are Professor Justin Ren and Professor Jinglong Zhao from Questrom. Her project title is “Optimizing Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure on University Campuses: A Queueing-Theoretic Analysis of Capacity and Congestion.”