(US and Canada) Wayfair Inc., one of the world’s largest destinations for the home, announced that Ashwin Rao has joined the company as Chief Science Officer. Rao, who has more than two decades of experience as a leader in the finance and retail industries, will report to Wayfair’s incoming Chief Technology Officer, Fiona Tan, and join Wayfair’s strong bench of technologists driving the future of shopping across all home categories.

Rao will help accelerate the company’s continued growth through technological innovation fueled by machine learning, mathematical modeling and algorithms that further strengthen the shopping experience. Before joining Wayfair, Rao served as vice president of artificial intelligence at Target Corporation where he led global AI and data science teams develop products and solutions for supply chain, merchandising, search, recommendations, and marketing.

Rao will continue as an adjunct professor at Stanford University where he serves as the director of the Mathematical & Computational Finance program, bringing the latest academic insights to Wayfair’s technology.

“The breadth and depth of Wayfair’s technological operations and expertise rival that of any technologically-advanced organization,” notes Rao. “I look forward to leading innovation that creates operational efficiencies, enables consumers to easily find the right product, and helps Wayfair achieve its growth objectives.”

Niraj Nagrani will join Wayfair as vice president of global supplier marketplace, pricing, catalog, and merchandising technologies. 

“Technology underpins everything we do at Wayfair,” says Tan, “As an e-commerce and supply chain leader with suppliers and operations around the world, Wayfair is at the forefront of solving some of the most sophisticated and complex technological challenges facing retail. Ashwin and Niraj bring valuable expertise to the leadership team as we work together to drive the future evolution of our customer experience across online and physical retail.”