Industry Experience | Chuan (River) Zhu

Research-relevant industry collaboration and internship experience by Chuan (River) Zhu in AI-enabled service operations, platform operations, and operational problem diagnosis.
Author

Chuan (River) Zhu

Keywords

industry collaboration, AI-enabled service operations, platform operations, Alibaba customer operations, service operations, empirical operations management

Industry Experience

Industry Experience

My industry experience supports my empirical research in AI-enabled service operations, platform operations, and operational decision-making.

Alibaba Group EDF Climate Corps & LONGi Research

Experience

Alibaba Group

Customer Operations Department | Research Scientist | Full-time, Onsite, Academic Collaboration | Hangzhou, China | July 2022 - Present
  • Collaborate on human-AI hybrid customer service system design.
  • Develop algorithms with causal inference to better manage worker supply.
  • Design data-driven strategies to optimize customer service operations.
  • Provide academic consulting to support Alibaba’s operational innovation initiatives.

Research relevance: This collaboration supports my research on AI-enabled customer service operations, human-AI collaboration, workforce management, and platform operations.

Environmental Defense Fund Climate Corps and LONGi Green Energy

Climate Corps Fellow | Full-time, Onsite, Internship | Xi’an, China | July 2021 - Oct. 2021
  • Analyzed supplier-side carbon-management challenges and green supply-chain opportunities.
  • Designed supplier survey instruments and benchmarked leading firms’ decarbonization practices.
  • Developed a green supplier empowerment roadmap for training, renewable-energy adoption, monitoring, and incentives.

Research relevance: This experience is related to operational problem diagnosis, supplier-side analysis, benchmarking, and implementation-oriented sustainability work.

LONGi green supply chain public project page

Research Connection

These roles help ground my academic work in operational settings where technology, workers, customers, and organizations interact. The Alibaba collaboration is most directly connected to my current agenda on AI-enabled service operations and platform operations. The EDF Climate Corps and LONGi experience adds broader exposure to supplier-side operational analysis and sustainability-oriented process improvement.