Mahyar A. Amouzegar | |
---|---|
Born | Orumieh, Iran |
Nationality | American |
Occupation(s) | Mathematician, engineer, policy analyst, author and academic |
Academic background | |
Education | Bachelor of Science in Applied Mathematics Master of Science in Electrical Engineering Doctor of Philosophy in Operations Research |
Alma mater | San Francisco State University University of California, Los Angeles |
Academic work | |
Institutions | New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (New Mexico Tech) The University of New Orleans Cal Poly Pomona |
Website | https://www.amouzegar.com/ |
Mahyar A. Amouzegar is an Iranian-American mathematician,engineer,policy analyst,author,and academic. He is the President of New Mexico Tech. [1]
Amouzegar research encompasses modeling and simulation,optimization,logistics and supply chain management,organizational studies and national security policy analysis. [2] [3]
Amouzegar is a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and Its Applications,and Institute of Combinatorics and Its Applications. [4] He served as Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Applied Mathematics and Decision Sciences [5] and is an Associate Editor for the International Journal of Applied Decision Sciences. [6]
Born in Iran to a bookkeeper,Amouzegar grew up surrounded by literature. Each night,his father brought home a new book from the publishing house where he worked,filling their home with a variety of works. At age fourteen,in 1978,he left Tehran to live with his older sisters in San Francisco. [7] Due to the political unrest leading to the Iranian Revolution,his parents were unable to join him in the United States for over five years. During this period,he developed a writing habit,balancing his interest in literature with his aptitude for math. [8]
Amouzegar pursued his higher education,earning a Bachelor of Science in Applied Mathematics from San Francisco State University in 1983. He then proceeded to obtain a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering at the University of California,Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1989, [9] concurrently completing an Engineering Degree. During his master's studies,he focused on operations research to address policy issues later completing his doctoral studies in Operations Research at UCLA,with a specialization in Nonconvex Optimization. [10]
After obtaining his PhD,Amouzegar began his career as an Assistant Professor (Lecturer) at Massey University in 1995, [11] teaching operations research and developing models and algorithms for nonconvex optimization problems. He then moved to California State University,Long Beach,serving as Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies from 2005 to 2011. From 2003 to 2006,he was a Senior Honorary Visiting Fellow at Cass Business School,City University of London,and later served as President of the Western Decision Sciences Institute. Afterward,he was the Dean of Engineering and Professor of Systems Engineering at California State Polytechnic University-Pomona from 2011 to 2017. [12] Concurrently,he was a Senior National Security Policy Analyst for the RAND Corporation from 1998 to 2023. At the University of New Orleans,he served as Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs from 2017 to 2024. [13] He was appointed by the Governor to the Louisiana STEM Council in 2017 and served as the Freeport McMoRan Distinguished Professor. [14]
Since 2019,Amouzegar has held the Hancock-Whitney Distinguished Professorship of Finance while also serving as Vice President for International Relations at Alpha Iota Delta and as a member of the Jefferson Chamber Education and Workforce Development Committee. In 2024,he became President of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. [15]
Amouzegar's writing is influenced by his love of old movies,particularly 1940s screwball comedies and film noir,as well as novels like The Godfather . He developed an appreciation for Ernest Hemingway and Graham Greene,often writing to the music of operas like “Aida”. [16] His first two novels,A Dark Sunny Afternoon and Pisgah Road,explored the lives of two men navigating past love and drama. [8] Hanya Yanagihara of Kirkus Reviews praised "Pisgah Road" saying the "plot sing with nostalgia and regret,beautifully capturing the narrator's struggles with his own vulnerability. The author's touch is light as his characters deny their feelings,to themselves and to one another,until the right circumstances finally allow them to speak…A capable portrait of grief,longing,and second chances." [17] Among other works,he delved into the complexities of intimate human relationships through the reminiscences of protagonist Donte,offering an exploration of how personal history shapes identity in Dinner At 10:32. [18] His 2021 novel The Hubris of an Empty Hand presented eight stories on the themes of love,sacrifice,and the desire for remembrance and recognition,receiving numerous reviews. [19] [20]
Amouzegar's research has centered on optimization techniques and their application in solving complex problems across various domains,ranging from environmental management to military logistics and policy analysis. [10]
Amouzegar has conducted research on linear bilevel programming and environmental optimization offering methodologies and strategic decision models. He introduced a method for generating test problems for linear bilevel programming,systematically selecting a distant vertex from the solution of the relaxed linear programming problem. [21] His collaboration with Khosrow Moshirvaziri led to the development of two optimization models for hazardous waste capacity planning and treatment facility locations. [22] Building upon this,he addressed environmental challenges through bilevel programming,particularly focusing on the solid waste management deficit in California's San Francisco Bay Area. [23]
Amouzegar's research efforts have provided insights into the development of agile combat support systems. While examining Agile Combat Support (ACS) and mobility system design and evaluation,he alongside other researchers addressed trade-offs,resource requirements,and support options across scenarios,to establish a robust planning framework for future ACS. [24] He then utilized an optimization model to evaluate different global forward support location (FSL) options for storing war reserve materiel,balancing land and sea-based FSLs to minimize peacetime costs while ensuring sufficient support for training. [25] In related research,his publication,"Evaluation of Options for Overseas Combat Support Basing," presented an analytic framework and model for assessing overseas combat support basing options to ensure swift and efficient support for US forces in diverse deployment scenarios. [26] He was also part of a 2015 technical report at the Rand Corporation which delved into the challenges faced by the US Air Force in maintaining secure air bases in the Pacific region due to potential threats from near-peer powers highlighting significant impacts on combat support and logistics requirements. [27]
Satisficing is a decision-making strategy or cognitive heuristic that entails searching through the available alternatives until an acceptability threshold is met. The term satisficing,a portmanteau of satisfy and suffice,was introduced by Herbert A. Simon in 1956,although the concept was first posited in his 1947 book Administrative Behavior. Simon used satisficing to explain the behavior of decision makers under circumstances in which an optimal solution cannot be determined. He maintained that many natural problems are characterized by computational intractability or a lack of information,both of which preclude the use of mathematical optimization procedures. He observed in his Nobel Prize in Economics speech that "decision makers can satisfice either by finding optimum solutions for a simplified world,or by finding satisfactory solutions for a more realistic world. Neither approach,in general,dominates the other,and both have continued to co-exist in the world of management science".
Policy analysis or public policy analysis is a technique used in the public administration sub-field of political science to enable civil servants,nonprofit organizations,and others to examine and evaluate the available options to implement the goals of laws and elected officials. People who regularly use policy analysis skills and techniques on the job,particularly those who use it as a major part of their job duties are generally known by the title policy analyst. The process is also used in the administration of large organizations with complex policies. It has been defined as the process of "determining which of various policies will achieve a given set of goals in light of the relations between the policies and the goals."
Land-use forecasting undertakes to project the distribution and intensity of trip generating activities in the urban area. In practice,land-use models are demand-driven,using as inputs the aggregate information on growth produced by an aggregate economic forecasting activity. Land-use estimates are inputs to the transportation planning process.
The Biocomplexity Institute of Virginia Tech was a research institute specializing in bioinformatics,computational biology,and systems biology. The institute had more than 250 personnel,including over 50 tenured and research faculty. Research at the institute involved collaboration in diverse disciplines such as mathematics,computer science,biology,plant pathology,biochemistry,systems biology,statistics,economics,synthetic biology and medicine. The institute developed -omic and bioinformatic tools and databases that can be applied to the study of human,animal and plant diseases as well as the discovery of new vaccine,drug and diagnostic targets.
The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) is an independent International research institute located in Laxenburg,near Vienna in Austria,founded as an East-West scientific cooperation initiative during the Cold War. Through its research programs and initiatives,the institute conducts policy-oriented interdisciplinary research into issues too large or complex to be solved by a single country or academic discipline. These include climate change,energy security,population aging,and sustainable development. The results of IIASA research and the expertise of its researchers are made available to policymakers worldwide to help them make informed and evidence-based policies.
Info-gap decision theory seeks to optimize robustness to failure under severe uncertainty,in particular applying sensitivity analysis of the stability radius type to perturbations in the value of a given estimate of the parameter of interest. It has some connections with Wald's maximin model;some authors distinguish them,others consider them instances of the same principle.
The Wildlife Enforcement Monitoring System (WEMS) Initiative,brainchild of environment policy researcher Remi Chandran,is an environmental governance project developed for assisting in monitoring the effectiveness of enforcement and compliance of wildlife law at a national level. The purpose of WEMS initiative is to monitor trafficking and illegal wildlife crime through a joint effort carried out by United Nations bodies,national governments,private industries,civil society and research institutions,by building a common data collection and reporting mechanism at a national level. The project plans to bring together various national institutions to a common information sharing platform and thereby building the capacity of the states to manage knowledge on wildlife crime trends and threat assessments. The compiled data will be then analyzed and selected non nominal information will be made available online through the WEMS website. WEMS will also help in providing analysed information electronically to all the national enforcement agencies and international policy makers including Interpol and CITES Secretariat. Selected information will be shared with the public for bringing awareness about wildlife Crime. The WEMS initiative works by bringing together Customs,Police,and Forest to a common information sharing mechanism within the national government and this will improve inter agency cooperation in tackling environmental crime holistically. Research and analysis of the crime data will be carried out through a designated national research Institute which will also carry out policy analysis identifying the trends and reasons for non compliance. It will also attempt to analyse the legal decisions on wildlife crimes from data obtained from local courts and will be able to identify weakness in legislation if any. Apart from this,the carriers involved in the illegal trade will also be recorded.
The Wildlife Enforcement Monitoring System will provide the platform for our enforcement agencies to collect and share information on the trends and patterns of wildlife crime. Moreover,the cross-border nature of wild life crime underscores the need to enhance cooperation among our governments and to pool financial and human resources. I am confident that these measures will go a long way in enhancing our capacity to protect our wildlife resources.
The rational planning model is a model of the planning process involving a number of rational actions or steps. Taylor (1998) outlines five steps,as follows:
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