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2026 INFORMS Railway Application Section (RAS) officer nominations
1.Your First Name
2.Your Last Name
3.INFORMS email address (with RAS membership)
4.Candidate for Vice Chair

Yili Tang

Dr. Yili (Kelly) Tang is currently serving as an Assistant Professor at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. Dr. Tang has held key positions such as Algorithm Engineer II at Zhejiang Cainiao Co., Alibaba Group in China and Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. She brings a wealth of expertise to the transportation and railway fields.

Dr. Tang is an active member in RAS and has been Treasurer and Secretary of RAS. She has been chairing the RAS international webinars, inviting both students and professionals to present their research in webinar series. She has also secured keynote presentations by INFORMS President David Hunt alongside distinguished international scholars and leading industry executives. She is actively engaged in RAS webinars, competitions and international initiatives to promote and expand RAS horizon and global scope.
5.Candidate for Treasurer

Zhaohu (Jonathan) Fan

Dr. Zhaohu (Jonathan) Fan, Lecturer in Information Technology Management at Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business, is a dedicated INFORMS and RAS member since 2021 and a candidate for Treasurer of the INFORMS Railway Applications Section (RAS) for 2026.

With expertise in business analytics, fund management, and financial reporting, he teaches analytics and leads practicum projects involving real-world budgeting and coordination with corporate partners. His background includes managing research and teaching funds with a focus on transparency, accountability, and efficiency. Within RAS, he has mentored student teams in railway analytics competitions on predictive maintenance and optimization. If elected, he plans to ensure timely fund administration, prepare clear annual budgets, maintain detailed financial records, and collaborate closely with leadership to align financial planning with RAS goals.
6.Candidate for Secretary

Shuguang Zhan

Dr. Shuguang Zhan is a full professor at the Hefei University of Technology specializing in railway operation optimization, with expertise in train dispatching, timetabling, passenger route modeling, and traffic big data analysis. He earned his doctorate from Southwest Jiaotong University and completed visiting research at Erasmus University Rotterdam and the University of Hong Kong.

As a long-standing INFORMS and RAS member, he received multiple INFORMS RAS competition awards (2015, 2024) and serves as Associate Editor of Transportmetrica A and guest editor for several transportation journals. For 2026, he seeks to serve as Secretary of the INFORMS RAS Section, aiming to support the Chairs and effectively manage the Section’s administrative duties.
7.Any other comments you have