Hi! I am a third year Ph.D. candidate in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at the University of California, Berkeley, advised by Prof. Chiwei Yan. I also collaborate with Prof. Hongyao Ma from Columbia Business School.
Before coming to Berkeley, I completed a double major in Mathematical Analytics & Operations Research and Economics at the University of California, Davis.
Research Interests
I am broadly interested in understanding how platform design decisions shape user behavior and operational efficiency in real-world settings.
My current work focuses on dynamic games and queueing systems, combining tools from operations research and game theory with an increasing emphasis on machine learning methods. In particular, I have been developing computational tools to analyze equilibrium behavior in strategic environments motivated by real-world applications such as:
- Algorithms for rideshare dispatch and congestion management
- Allocation mechanisms for organ transplant waitlists
Conference Proceedings
- Cerna, D., Yan, C., Ma, H. An Equilibrium Solver for a Dynamic Queueing Game, 26th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC ’25), Stanford, CA, 2025.
Working Papers
- Cerna, D., Yan, C., Ma, H. An Equilibrium Solver for a Dynamic Queueing Game [Code]
Talks
- ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC’25), Stanford University (July 2025)
- INFORMS Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA (October 2025)
Teaching
Graduate Student Instructor (UC Berkeley)
IEOR 153 — Logistics Network Design and Supply Chain Management (Fall 2024, Fall 2025)
IEOR 253 — Supply Chain and Logistics Management (Spring 2025)
IEOR 180 — Senior Project (Spring 2026)