Draft:Soroush Saghafian

Soroush Saghafian is an Iranian-American academic, operations researcher, and a public policy professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. His work focuses on developing and applying methods in Operations Research and Management Science to address societal problems in healthcare. Saghafian introduced the concepts of "Ambiguous Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (APOMDP)" and "Ambiguous Dynamic Treatment Regimes" in Operations Research. He is the founder and director of the Public Impact Analytics Science Lab (PIAS-Lab) at Harvard.

Education
Saghafian obtained an M.S. degree in Industrial Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in 2005, and an M.S. in Mathematics from the University of Michigan in 2009. He holds a Ph.D. in Industrial and Operations Engineering from the University of Michigan, awarded in 2012.

Career
Saghafian is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is also a faculty affiliate for the Harvard Center for Health Decision Science, the Harvard Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, the Harvard Data Science Initiative, and the Harvard Ariadne Labs. At Harvard, he teaches courses on machine learning, data analytics, and operations management. His research has been published in prominent journals such as Management Science, Operations Research, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, and National Academy of Medicine. Saghafian serves on the editorial boards of Operations Research, Management Science, and INFORMS Service Science. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Department of Defense (Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs), and the Mayo Clinic.

Saghafian has been featured in numerous media outlets for his work on healthcare policy and operations research. He has been interviewed by PBS NewsHour, NBC News , and Euronews among others. His research on hospital closures, vertical integration in medicine, and the impact of artificial intelligence on healthcare has received widespread attention.

Awards and recognition
Saghafian has received several awards for his research, including the INFORMS MSOM Young Scholar Prize in 2021 for outstanding contributions to scholarship in operations management, and the inaugural INFORMS 2020 Mehrotra Research Excellence Award for significant contributions to the practice of health applications through operations research and management science methodologies.