Congratulations to Mojtaba Salarpour on His Successful PhD Dissertation Defense!

In an academic's life, one of the many joys is seeing one's students achieve milestones.

Today was a very special day, since Mojtaba Salarpour,  my PhD student in Management Science at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst, successfully defended his doctoral dissertation, with the title: "Essays on Supply Chain Economic Networks for Disaster Management Inspired by the Covid-19 Pandemic." The abstract of his dissertation can be viewed here. Mojtaba is my 23rd PhD student. I am grateful to the committee members: Professor Priyak Arora of the Isenberg School and Professors Hari Balasubramanian and Chaitra Gopalappa of the College of Engineering at UMass Amherst. 

When I arrived for the defense today, Mojtaba had assembled all sorts of treats and refreshments and we managed a quick photo before the committee members and others arrived.

Mojtaba's PhD dissertation research has already yielded several journal articles and a book chapter.

The above paper is open access, thank to Springer Nature and Operations Research Forum.

Mojtaba served for two years as the President of the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter (1 1/2 of those in the pandemic). Under his leadership, the chapter received two national awards from INFORMS because of its activities. Below is a photo taken at the Phoenix National INFORMS Meeting in 2021, at which the Chapter was honored with its latest award.

Mojtaba also taught required two different courses at the Isenberg School and has experience teaching in both face to face and in online formats. He clearly, is the "full academic package" with talents in research and scholarship, teaching, as well as service.

I am delighted that he will be joining the faculty of Texas A&M Commerce as an Assistant Professor, in the tenure track, in the Fall.

It is wonderful to see the academic family tree growing with the list of my PhD students, whose dissertation committees I chaired listed here.

And, my academic genealogy, in terms of those "who came before me" is featured below with incredible scientists such as Maxwell, Newton, and Galileo!

My students and I are clearly "standing on the shoulders of giants."