Rate My Professor Meng Li

Professor Meng Li holds the Endowed C.T. Bauer Chair of AI and serves as Chair of the Department of Decision and Information Sciences in the C.T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston. He is also the Founding Director of the Bauer Human-Centered AI Institute. Li earned his Ph.D. in Operations Management from The University of Texas at Dallas in 2013. He joined the University of Houston faculty in 2021 as an associate professor and has taught supply chain management courses, primarily at the undergraduate level. Previously affiliated with Rutgers University School of Business-Camden, where he taught courses such as Optimization and Spreadsheet Modeling from 2018 to 2020 and received the Rutgers Research Council Award and Catalyst Grant from the Provost’s Fund for Research in 2020.

Li's research specializations encompass operations management, human-centered AI, sustainability, service management, managerial behavior, and human-algorithm interaction. His publications appear in premier journals including Management Science, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, Operations Research, Production and Operations Management, Journal of Operations Management, Strategic Management Journal, and Nature Sustainability. Notable works include 'Overconfident Competing Newsvendors' with Nicholas Petruzzi and Jun Zhang (Management Science, 2017), 'Value of High-Quality Logistics: Evidence from a Clash between SF Express and Alibaba' with Ruomeng Cui and Qiang Li (Management Science, 2020), 'Wholesale Price Discrimination in Global Sourcing' with Ruomeng Cui, Jingyun Li, and Lili Yu (Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, 2021), 'Transshipment between Overconfident Newsvendors' with Jialu Li and Xuan Zhao (Production and Operations Management, 2021), 'AI Automation and Retailer Regret in Supply Chains' with Tao Li (Production and Operations Management, 2022), and 'Mental Accounting in Allocating Capacity' (2025). Li has earned major honors such as the President’s Circle Awards (University of Houston, 2025), Lucile and Leroy Melcher Excellence in Research Award (2023), Shell Sustainability Research Grant ($100K, 2022), John Aure Buesseler Distinguished Lectureship (Texas Tech, 2024), and Global Business Management Award (IEOM Conference, 2023). He contributes editorially as Department Editor for Journal of Operations Management and Decision Sciences Journal, and Senior Editor for Production and Operations Management, and serves on the Research and Scholarship Committee of the Faculty Senate at University of Houston (2024-2025). His leadership advances AI research and education in business contexts.