IRAIS 2024

Dr. Soroush Saghafian is an Associate Professor at Harvard University. He is the founder and director of the Public Impact Analytics Science Lab (PIAS-Lab) at Harvard, which is devoted to advancing and applying the science of analytics for solving societal problems that can have public impact. He also serves as a core faculty member for the Harvard Center for Health Decision Science, a faculty affiliate for (a) the Harvard Data Science Initiative, (b) Harvard Ph.D. Program in Health Policy, (c) the Harvard Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, (d) the Harvard Belfer Center for Science and Technology, and (e) the Harvard Center for Public Leadership. He is also an associate faculty member at the Harvard Ariadne Labs (a pioneer lab in health systems innovation) and holds a research collaborator position at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Saghafian is an expert in healthcare analytics and healthcare operations management and has been collaborating with a variety of hospitals to improve their operational efficiency, patient flow, medical decision-making, and more broadly, healthcare delivery policies. Dr. Saghafian’s research has appeared in the news, including in pieces and interviews by PBS News, NBC News, Euronews, The Hill, National Academy of Medicine, New-Meical.net, Industry Global News 24, Global Health News Wire, Eureka Alert (American Association for the Advancement of Science), Managed Healthcare Executive, ABC Channel (TV), and INFORMS. He has won various awards for his research, including the INFORMS MSOM Young Scholar Prize for “outstanding contributions to scholarship in operations management,” INFORMS MSOM Responsible Research Award (second place) for “contributing knowledge that may have implications for making the world a better place,” the Inaugural INFORMS Mehrotra Research Excellence Award “for significant contributions to the practice of health applications through operations research and management science modeling and methodologies,” INFORMS Pierskalla Award “for the best research paper in healthcare,” and the Production and Operations Managements Society (POMS) College of Healthcare Best Paper Award. He serves on the editorial board of a few journals, including Management Science, Operations Research, POM, and Service Science.

Seyed Sajjadi is an experienced technologist and entrepreneur with extensive experience spanning academia, industry, and government. He founded nFlux AI, a NASA spin-out, after contributing to NASA JPL’s Europa Clipper project and developing autonomy features for the PUFFER robot. Sajjadi has also spearheaded major projects under a U.S Air Force grant, designing AI-driven robotic search and rescue systems. His tenure as a Data Scientist at Electronic Arts involved creating machine learning solutions for game analytics. Additionally, he has consulted for Boeing and GM on autonomous systems and holds a patent in the field. His work has earned him over $5M in contracts from NASA and the U.S Air Force, $10M in venture funding, and numerous accolades including Forbes 30 Under 30. Sajjadi has published extensively in AI/ML and holds several prestigious awards and recognitions.