Biosketch

I'm Masoud Barah, an Operations Research and Statistical Modeling Enthusiast! I am a Research Specialist in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences at Northwestern University. My areas of interest include healthcare operations research, integer programming, and Markov decision processes. Additionally, I am interested in survival analysis. Currently, I am working on decision-making under uncertainty in the context of deceased donor kidney transplantation. I am also involved in simulating policies aimed at reducing non-utilized deceased donor kidneys. During my Ph.D. studies, I focused on equitable resource sharing problems under uncertainty.

Education

• Ph.D., Industrial Engineering (minor in Statistics), GPA: 4.0

  University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN
  Dissertation on stochastic equitable resource sharing/allocation systems

• M.Sc., Systems Engineering, GPA: 4.0

  Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), Tehran, Iran
  Dissertation on stochastic time-discretized network optimization

• B.Sc., Industrial Engineering, GPA: 3.19

  Khajeh Nasir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

Awards and Honors

• Recipient of 2022 Naval Research Logistc's Harold W. Kuhn Award
• Recipient of 2021 best paper award by the Omega, The International Journal of Managment Science

Selected Publications

• Barah, M., Kilambi, V., Friedewald, J., & Mehrotra, S. (2022). Implications of Accumulated Cold Time for US Kidney Transplantation Offer Acceptance. Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN) [Journal impact factor: 10.67 (2021)]. https://doi.org/10.2215/CJN.01600222

• Barah, M., & Mehrotra, S. (2021). Predicting kidney discard using machine learning. Transplantation, 105(9), 2054-2071. https://doi.org/10.1097/TP.0000000000003620

• Barah, M., Khojandi, A., Li, X., Hathaway, J., & Omitaomu, O. (2021). Optimizing green infrastructure placement under precipitation uncertainty. Omega, 100, 102196. [2021 best paper award by Omega]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.omega.2020.102196

• Mehrotra, S., Rahimian, H., Barah, M., Luo, F., & Schantz, K. (2020). A model of supply-chain decisions for resource sharing with an application to ventilator allocation to combat COVID-19. Naval Research Logistics (NRL), 67(5), 303-320. [NRL’s Harold Kuhn best paper award in 2022, NRL’s most cited paper in 2021 and 2022]. https://doi.org/10.1002/nav.21905

• Barah, M., Seifi, A., & Ostrowski, J. (2019). Decomposing Train Scheduling Problem into Integer-Optimal Polytopes, Transportation Science 53(3), 763-772. https://doi.org/10.1287/trsc.2018.0848

Research Support

Ongoing Research Support

National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK): R01 1R01DK118425-01A1, Sanjay Mehrotra (PI) 04/01/19 - Present
The objective of this project is to study the problem of kidney discard, identify potential interventions that can reduce the risk of discard and subsequently test these interventions in a simulation environment through proper calibration.
Roles: Post-doc Research Fellow, Research Specialist

Completed Research Support

National Science Foundation (NSF): CMMI-1634975, Jon Hathaway (PI) 08/01/16 - 07/31/22
The objective of this research is to (i) evaluate the response of a stormwater system to these scenarios by identifying the vulnerability of the system to flooding, (ii) develop a stochastic programming optimization model, to account for the uncertainties in weather patterns over a long planning horizon, and (iii) optimize equitable green infrastructure placement, within the stormwater system to maximize flood resiliency under climate uncertainties.
Role: Ph.D. student

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