Soroush Akbarijokar is a PhD candidate in Operations Research in the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, under the supervision of Dr. Taewoo Lee and Dr. Lisa Maillart. Before joining the program, Soroush received his bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Tehran.

His thesis focuses on inverse optimization methods for learning decision-making preferences from observed decisions, especially when those decisions are generated by decision-makers implicitly solving optimization problems with unknown and heterogeneous preferences. He currently studies robust models for clustering decision data and methods for learning preferences from suboptimal decisions in complex optimization problems.

Research interests: inverse optimization, decision-aware learning, robust optimization, mixed-integer optimization, and healthcare operations.

Soroush has presented his research at INFORMS and POMS conferences, including invited sessions, and has been involved in student service through the INFORMS Student Chapter and the International Engineering Students’ Organization.

Dr. Amir H. Alavi is an Associate Professor and B.P. America Faculty Fellow in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and holds courtesy appointments in the Department of Bioengineering and Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Alavi’s primary focus is on exploring, additive manufacturing and computational modeling of novel engineered material systems (e.g. mechanical metamaterials, nanogenerator composites). His team is dedicated to gaining a comprehensive understanding of the mechanics and electronics of these material systems across nano, micro, and macro scales. Dr. Alavi’s vision is to equip these engineered material systems with “a level of cognition” and “primitive intelligence” by seamlessly integrating advanced functionalities into their fabric. In this area, Dr. Alavi has coined the groundbreaking concept of “meta-tribomaterials” and initiated the scientific field of “mechanical metamaterial electronics (meta-mechanotronics)”, which merge mechanical metamaterials, digital electronics, and nano energy harvesting. The meta-mechanotronic systems can sense, self-power, compute, actuate, and communicate wirelessly without external power or added electronics. 

Dr. Alavi is also pioneering the field of “self-powered monitoring”, where the operating power of the embedded sensing systems is directly harvested from the signal being monitored. His team is actively developing cutting-edge, self-powered sensing and monitoring technologies tailored for a wide range of structural systems, spanning from large civil infrastructure systems to minuscule medical implants. In addition, Dr. Alavi’s original and seminal contributions to developing and deploying advanced machine learning, structural optimization and bio-inspired computational techniques have established a road map for their broad applications in various engineering domains. His team is harnessing the power of the created principles and concepts in the fields of civil infrastructure, construction, aerospace, and biomedical engineering.

Dr. Alavi is the Editor-in-Chief of npj Metamaterials, a Nature Portfolio journal, and also serves as an editor for Elsevier's Measurement and Chip journals. He is the recipient of multiple prestigious awards, including the NSF CAREER Award, the NIH Trailblazer Award, and the ASME Rising Star of Mechanical Engineering Award. He has published 8 books and has made significant contributions to the academic landscape with over 200 published works across archival journals, book chapters, and conference proceedings. His work in the field of systems engineering science is widely acknowledged by his peers, with over 26,000 citations and an h-index of 76. Dr. Alavi is among the Web of Science ESI's World Top 1% Scientific Minds in 2018 and 2023, and has maintained his status on the Stanford University List of Top 1% Scientists in the World for five consecutive years (2019-2025). His work has been highlighted in local and national news outlets, including the Post-Gazette, NBC, ABC, CBS-affiliated television stations, and The New York Times.

Brian R. Anderson has 20 years of combined experience in clinical practice, classroom and clinical instruction and multidisciplinary research. He has taught at the graduate and postgraduate levels since 2005 and, since 2020, has focused exclusively on research. Before joining the University of Pittsburgh, he spent five years as a full-time researcher at the Palmer Center for Chiropractic Research. His work examines health care utilization and outcomes for spinal pain disorders using administrative claims, electronic health records and survey data. He also studies research capacity building in chiropractic and other complementary and integrative health institutions, and conducts evidence syntheses, including scoping and systematic reviews. He supports non-research faculty and chiropractic students through participatory-research mentorship. At Pitt, Dr. Anderson collaborates across disciplines on a variety of research initiatives, provides research advising and integrates research concepts into the curriculum.

Renae Barger is Associate Vice Chancellor for the Health Sciences Library System (HSLS). In this position, she is responsible for the leadership and administration of the library's services and collections to support all six health sciences schools. Ms. Barger oversees innovation and development in the areas of user services, collections and resources, management and infrastructure, cooperative initiatives and outside funding. Additionally, she oversees the licensing and management of an extensive collection of clinical e-resources for the hospitals and facilities of UPMC, along with services to support graduate medical education programs.

Ms. Barger is a University of Pittsburgh alumna, earning a BS from the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, an MLIS from the School of Information Sciences and a graduate certificate from the Department of Biomedical Informatics, School of Medicine. She began her career at HSLS in 2002, starting as a trainee in the Library and Biomedical Informatics Trainee Program and progressively advancing to assistant director and associate director positions. From 2011 to 2021, Ms. Barger served as Executive Director and then program lead for the Network of the National Library of Medicine—Middle Atlantic Region, building a highly regarded program that was recognized regionally and nationally for innovative health information outreach. From 2017 to 2021, she served as Associate Director for Research, Instruction, and Clinical Information services for HSLS, providing leadership for initiatives and services that influence research, access, instruction, scholarly communication and data management.

Ms. Barger also serves a PI for the Network of the National Library of Medicine All of Us Program Center.  She is an active member of the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries where she supports the onboarding and professional development of new health sciences library directors and serves as a mentor to emerging leaders. 

Taryn M. Bayles is Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering and Undergraduate Program Director, and serves as the Chair of the Chemical Engineering Division of the American Society of Engineering Education.  She has spent part of her career working in industry with Exxon, Westinghouse and Phillips Petroleum, with her industrial experience included process engineering, computer modeling and control, process design and testing, and engineering management. She has also spent more than 20 years teaching Chemical Engineering at the University of Nevada Reno, University of Pittsburgh, University of Maryland College Park and University of Maryland Baltimore County. In her courses she incorporates her industrial experience by bringing practical examples and interactive learning to help students understand fundamental engineering principles.

Her research focuses on Engineering Education and Outreach to increase awareness of and interest in pursuing engineering as a career, as well as to understand what factors help students be successful once they have chosen engineering as a major. She is the co-author of the INSPIRES (INcreasing Student Participation, Interest and Recruitment in Engineering & Science) curriculum, which introduces high school students to engineering design through hands-on experiences and inquiry-based learning with real world engineering design challenges. This curriculum targets the International Technology and Engineering Education Association Standards as well as National Next Generation Science Standards and aligns with the Framework for K-12 Science Education.