“Fighting Deforestation through Mechanism Design: A Dynamic Hierarchical Principal-Agent Approach”

Department of Analytics and Operations

A short report from Anton Reiling on his research findings presented in the conference.

POMS-HK 2026 was my first conference to ever attend and present at. I gave a talk under the name “Fighting Deforestation through Mechanism Design: A Dynamic Hierarchical Principal-Agent Approach”, which is joint work with my advisor Prof. Jussi Keppo from NUS and Prof. Dan Iancu from Stanford University.

This year’s POMS-HK was held in Shenzhen under the theme “Intelligent Operations and Humanistic Management”, which my talk fit well into. My presentation was attended by numerous people, and I got great feedback for it as well as very helpful inputs and potential extension ideas. Preparing for the talk also greatly helped me to take a step back and look at my research from a bird’s perspective. Further, explaining complex problems in simple terms is an important skill that I was able to improve during my preparations.

I also attended many other sessions, some of them very closely related to my own research, but also some others that were very different helping me to broaden my horizon and get a better understanding of cutting-edge topics in adjacent fields. Talking to scholars further enabled me to get some inspiration and research ideas. Moreover, during a company visit at BGI Genomics, we got some very interesting insights into the company operations, its research efforts, and its impressive company history, enhancing the lives of countless of people. BGI is living the entrepreneurial spirit and progress that has been driving Shenzhen, which is also reflected in the university CUHK-SZ, where the conference was held.

Lastly, this conference helped me interact with inspiring researchers from all over the world, build connections, and talk about potential future collaborations. I believe research should not solely be conducted on someone’s own desk, but it should be presented, discussed, and complemented through collaboration.