CHDS affiliated faculty member, Soroush Saghafian, has launched the Public Impact Analytics Science Lab (PIAS-Lab), which is devoted to advancing and applying the science of analytics for solving societal problems that can have public impact. The mission of his lab is to improve societal outcomes by developing, integrating, and using appropriate analytical tools in Operations Research, Machine Learning, Big Data, Decision-Making, Statistics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and related fields.
The Lab is currently focusing on the healthcare sector and is collaborating with Statistical Reinforcement Learning Lab at Harvard, the Mayo Clinic, and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).
Saghafian teaches courses on Machine Learning and Big Data Analytics. His research involves using analytic methods to create public impact, including saving lives through cutting lines in Hospital Emergency Departments, helping states in the U.S. and governments abroad understand what COVID-19 policies they should impose, finding new ways to improve transparency in the healthcare sector, mitigating the impact of rapid increase in hospital closures, introducing new policies to face the increasing trend in vertical integration in the healthcare sector, and developing new methods of dynamic-decision making under ambiguity to help physicians make better decisions. He was the winner of the inaugural INFORMS 2020 Mehrotra Research Excellence Award “for significant contributions to the practice of health applications through operations research (OR) and management science (MS) modeling and methodologies.”
In addition to advancing the methods of analytic science, the lab will allow Saghafian to increase his efforts in mentoring and educating a range of students, researchers, and policymakers to become future leaders of advancing and implementing Analytics Science methods.
Learn more: About the PIAS-Lab
Learn more: Listen to Operations Research from Howard Raiffa
Learn more: About Machine Learning and Big Data Analytics Course
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