Amit Harlev

PhD Student
Center for Applied Math, Cornell University
[email protected]

About Me

I am a fifth year PhD student at Cornell University's Center for Applied Mathematics where I am fortunate to be advised by Ziv Scully. I am on the academic job market this year. My research focuses on scheduling in queues, with a particular interest in minimizing tail metrics and the Gittins index. I received my undergraduate degree in Mathematics from Harvey Mudd College in 2022. In 2024, I was awarded the NDSEG (accepted) and NSF GRFP (declined) graduate fellowships. Previously, I was a full time software engineer at Meta (2021). Recently, I started a blog and submitted by first post to SoME4.

Full Papers

Empirical Gittins for Data-Driven M/G/1 Scheduling with Arbitrary Job Size Distributions

Shefali Ramakrishna, Amit Harlev, Ziv Scully

POMACS, 2026 (SIGMETRICS 2026 issue).

[paper][DOI]

A Tale of Two Traffics: Optimizing Tail Latency in the Light-Tailed M/G/k

George Yu, Amit Harlev, Reevu Adakroy, Ziv Scully

POMACS, 2025 (SIGMETRICS 2026 issue).

[paper][slides][DOI]

Combinatorial Selection with Costly Information

Shuchi Chawla, Dimitris Christou, Amit Harlev, Ziv Scully.

SODA 2026.

[paper][arXiv][DOI]

A Gittins Policy for Optimizing Tail Latency

Amit Harlev, George Yu, Ziv Scully.

POMACS, 2025 (SIGMETRICS 2025 issue).

[paper][slides][extended abstract][DOI]

Short version: Performance Evaluation Review, 2024 (MAMA 2024 issue). [paper][slides][DOI]

The Doubly Stochastic Single Eigenvalue Problem: A Computational Approach

Amit Harlev, Charles R. Johnson, Derek Lim.

Experimental Mathematics, 2020.

[arXiv][DOI]

Short Papers and Preprints

Empirical Gittins: M/G/1 Scheduling from Job Size Samples

Shefali Ramakrishna, Amit Harlev, Ziv Scully.

Performance Evaluation Review, 2025 (MAMA 2025 issue).

[paper][DOI]

Exploring Learned Representations of Neural Networks with Principal Component Analysis

Amit Harlev, Andrew Engel, Panos Stinis, Tony Chiang.

arXiv, 2023.

[arXiv]

Proof Notes

The Kingman Bound Basically Holds in the GI/GI/n

Amit Harlev, Yige Hong, Ziv Scully.

Proof note, August 2026.

[note]

Service

  • Webmaster for SNAPP Seminar (Fall 2024 – Spring 2026)
  • Co-founder and co-organizer for the Student Colloquium in Applied Mathematics (SCAM) at Cornell (Fall 2024 – Spring 2026)
  • Co-organizer for the Cornell Center for Applied Mathematics PhD student mentoring program (Fall 2024 – Spring 2026)
  • Reviewer for NeurIPS 2024 Workshop on Bayesian Decision-making and Uncertainty
  • Directed Reading Program mentor — discrete probability and Markov chains (Fall 2024)
  • Content Liaison for Cornell Math 1910 Academic Excellence Workshops (Fall 2023)
  • Cornell AWM chapter mentor (Nov 2022 – May 2023, Jan 2026 – Present)

Teaching

  • Instructor of Record for ENGRI 1101: Engineering Operations: Data Science and Decision Making, Cornell University (Summer 2026)
  • Speaker in Cornell Mathematics Teaching Seminar on "Designing Homework and Exam Problems" (April 22, 2026)
  • Instructor of Record for Math 1110: Calculus I, Cornell University (replaced other instructor mid-semester; Spring 2026, Feb 25 – End of Semester)
  • 4x Guest Lecture in ORIE 6500: Applied Stochastic Processes, Cornell University (Fall 2025)
  • Teaching Assistant, Math 1910: Calculus for Engineers, Cornell University (Fall 2023)
  • Teaching Assistant, Math 2940: Linear Algebra for Engineers, Cornell University (Spring 2023)
  • Teaching Assistant, Math 2940: Linear Algebra for Engineers, Cornell University (Fall 2022)

Teaching Demos

Fellowships, Honors, and Awards