Faculty Directory

Assistant Professor of Operations Management

Education

BTech Indian Institute of Technology (2010)

MS Carnegie Mellon University (2014)

PhD Carnegie Mellon University (2018)

Academic Expertise

Current Research

retail operations, returns management, OM-marketing interface, service operations

Positions Held

Associate, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) Mumbai, India, June 2010 – May 2012

Selected Publications

1. “Be the Buyer – Leveraging the Wisdom of the Crowd in E-Commerce Assortment Planning“

   Journal Article:Leela Nageswaran, Yu Kan, Uttara Ananthakrishnan, (forthcoming). Management Science,
2. “Anti-competitive Effects of a Dominant Retailer’s Guaranteed Profit Margin and Low-Price Contracts“

   Journal Article:Leela Nageswaran, Aditya Jain, Haresh Gurnani, (forthcoming). Management Science,
3. “Offline Returns for Online Retailers via Partnership“

   Journal Article:Leela Nageswaran, Elina Hwang, Soo-Haeng Cho, (2025). Management Science, Vol. 71(1), pp. 279-297.
4. “Implications of Vaccine Shopping during Pandemic“

   Journal Article:Leela Nageswaran, (2022). Production and Operations Management, Vol. 32(4), pp. 1133-1149.
5. “Value of Online-Offline Return Partnership to Offline Retailers“

   Journal Article:Elina Hwang, Leela Nageswaran, Soo-Haeng Cho, (2021). Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Vol. 24(3), pp. 1630-1649.
6. “Queues with Redundancy: Is Waiting in Multiple Lines Fair?“

   Journal Article:Leela Nageswaran, Alan Scheller-Wolf, (2021). Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Vol. 24(4), pp. 1959-1976.
7. “Consumer Return Policies in Omnichannel Operations“

   Journal Article:Leela Nageswaran, Soo-Haeng Cho, Alan Scheller-Wolf, (2019). Management Science, Vol. 66(12), pp. 5558-5575.

Working Papers

Who Should Set Consumer Returns Policies in Online Marketplaces: Supplier or Platform? (with Narendra Agrawal)

Impact of COVID-19 on Omnichannel Retail: Drivers of Online Sales during Pandemic (with Elina Hwang and Soo-Haeng Cho)

Capacity Flexibility via On-Demand Warehousing (with Soraya Fatehi and Michael Wagner)

Horizontal Information Sharing in Omnichannel Operations: Impact of Information Errors (with Jizhou Lu, Jinpeng Xu, Jin Kyung Kwak, Nagesh Gavirneni)

The Role of Product Quality in Marketplaces (with Aditya Jain and Haresh Gurnani)

Honors and Awards

PhD Program Mentoring Award, Foster School of Business, University of Washington, 2024.

Management Science Distinguished Service Award, 2024.

Finalist, INFORMS Junior Faculty Interest Group (JFIG) Paper Competition, 2023.

Poets & Quants Top 50 Best Undergraduate Business Professors, 2022.

Management Science Meritorious Service Award, 2022.

Dean's Excellence Award for Undergraduate Teaching, Foster School of Business, University of Washington, 2022.

William W. Cooper Doctoral Dissertation Award, Carnegie Mellon University, 2018.

Second place, IBM Service Science Best Student Paper Award, 2016.

William Larimer Mellon Fellowship, Carnegie Mellon University, 2012-2016.