Oriana Calderón earned bachelor’s degrees in economics (2005) and industrial engineering (2006) at Universidad del Valle, Colombia, and received her MBA (2015) at Universidad ICESI, Colombia. In 2023, she earned her PhD in transportation engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), where she is starting a postdoctoral fellowship. Her primary research objective is contributing to the advancement of sustainable cities through sustainable supply chains. She developed a novel freight pricing model to induce order consolidation, reduce trips, and lower emissions. She also is engaged in projects related to panic buying during the COVID-19 pandemic and how it disrupted supply chains and hindered access to critical resources. Future research will include the examination of cross-country panic buying behavior during different stages of the pandemic and using AI to develop early warning systems. As president of RPI’s chapter of the Women in Transportation Seminar, Calderón encourages female students’ participation in the transportation industry. She was selected for the “To My Younger Self” mentoring program and received scholarships from Amazon Supply Chain Optimization Technologies and INFORMS — both of which recognized her efforts in underrepresented populations. As a future engineering professor, she will incorporate DEI topics into her course content, addressing issues such as the lack of transportation access in underserved areas.

Research Interests

Sustainable Urban Logistics