Transportation Resource Management in Large-scale Freight Consolidation Networks

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Completing this dissertation has been quite a journey! It has brought me immense professional and personal growth and a plethora of experiences that I will fondly remember. I am very grateful to have worked with Alan Erera and Martin Savelsbergh. They have been exceptional advisors who guided, motivated, and supported me to develop as a researcher and make this dissertation possible. Their patience and encouragement was constant and unwavering in every stage of my life as a Ph.D. student, especially during bad times. It has been a pleasure having them as my mentors. I would like to thank Ozlem Ergun, Joel Sokol, and Richard Wong for their time and effort to serve on my dissertation committee. I have greatly benefited from their insightful minds during our discussions about the research contained here as well as other unrelated projects. I am also grateful to several fellow doctoral students at Georgia Tech. There are too many friends to whom I am indebted for many reasons, too many people to mention here, but any list would have to include Adem and Moin, for the countless hours we spent discussing homework assignments during the early years, Dexin, Feng, and Ralph, for all the fun outings and the honorary membership into the Chinese community, and Kate and Jackie, for being the best officemates ever. Finally, I would like to thank my family whose support despite the distance has kept me going through personal hardships and has allowed me to complete this journey. To them, I dedicate this dissertation.