Daniel Merchan

Dr. Daniel Merchán is a Research Consultant at the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics. His research focuses on logistics operations in large urban areas. Specifically, Dr. Merchan’s work explores how big data sources can be leveraged to inform last-mile strategies and operational plans, through data science, optimization and simulation methods. Daniel is affiliated to MIT CTL’s Megacity Logistics Lab and his research has been sponsored by several of the largest online retailers and CPG companies in the US, Latin America and India.

In addition to his work at MIT, Dr. Merchan is a Research Scientist in the Last Mile Science group at Amazon. Previously, Daniel served as co-Director of the Industrial Engineering Department at Universidad San Francisco (USFQ) in Ecuador.

Daniel received his PhD in Supply Chain Management from MIT in 2018. His educational background also includes a M.Sc. in Engineering Systems from MIT, graduate studies in data science at Harvard University, a M.Sc. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Texas A&M University sponsored by the Fulbright Program, and a B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering from USFQ with studies at Virginia Tech. Daniel has more than 10 years of experience in applied research and in consulting in logistics systems design, analysis and optimization.

Daniel is the recipient of the 2016 Best Doctoral Paper Award by the Information Systems, Logistics and Supply Chain Conference and DINALOG; and of the 2016 L.L. Waters Scholarship awarded by APICs. He teaches a graduate level course in data science in the MIT GCLOG Program.