Nan's research interests lie in discrete optimization under uncertainty. More specifically, they include:     

• Theory and algorithms for integer programming and combinatorial optimization
• Computational methods for large-scale optimization under uncertainty, in particular stochastic programming
• Stochastic modeling for large-scale dynamic systems

On the application side, Nan has studied the logistics and resource allocation issues in the U.S. liver transplantation and allocation system. His work is intended to design a better regional distribution system for liver allocation. He received an Honorable Mention for the George B. Dantzig Dissertation Award from the Institute of Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) in 2006, and received the Pritsker Dissertation Award, 1st Place, from the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE) in 2007. Here is an article published on IE Magazine, June 2007, describing my Ph.D. dissertation.

Nan has researched on several other operations research applications in health care with his close collaborations with various health care professionals and coursework in a clinical training program at Pitt. He continues his research on several issues related to liver, heart, and kidney transplantation and allocation. He has also started working on (rural area) outpatient clinic access management (an important problem in the Veterans Affairs hospital system).      

Nan has started his attempt to apply operations research in environmental sciences. He is currently working on optimal design for air pollution monitoring networks with a researcher at USF Environmental and Occupational Health.

Nan has published in Mathematical Programming, European Journal in Operational Research, and Journal of Medical Decision Making. He has served as referee for Operations Research, Mathematical Programming, Networks, Asian Pacific Journal of Operations Research, Journal of Global Optimization, Optimization Letters, Omega, Algorithmic Operations Research, and Health Care Management Science. He has also served as a referee for the 2005 Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM) Annual Conference, 2007 Industrial Engineering Research Conference (IERC2007), and 2007 American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference.  

Nan has served as panelist on two National Science Foundation CMMI unsolicited proposal review panels.

Since joining USF in Fall 2005, Nan has taught undergraduate-level course Deterministic Operations Research, and designed and taught new graduate-level course Nonlinear and Integer Programming. He will teach both nonlinear programming and integer programming as two separate courses at USF in the near future. He also taught an undergraduate-level probability and statistics course at Pitt.

Nan has made effort in teaching innovation for deterministic operations research, particularly for DOR solution methods.