Maryam Eghbalizarch
Biography
Dr. Eghbalizarch is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISYE) at the Southern Polytechnic College of Engineering and Engineering Technology (SPCEET), Kennesaw State University (KSU). She is a member of the National Cancer Institute-sponsored Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network (CISNET), the Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM), the Institute of Operations Research and the Management Science (INFORMS), and the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE).
She is the director of the Health Systems Optimization (HSOpt) Lab at Kennesaw State University. The lab focuses on integrating systems engineering and data science to enhance healthcare delivery and management, optimizing operations to achieve better patient outcomes and overall efficiency. Using Markov modeling, simulation, optimization, predictive analytics, and multi-criteria decision analysis, the team develops solutions to support medical decision-making and analyze the cost-effectiveness of healthcare interventions.
Before joining KSU, she worked as a Data Scientist in the Department of Health Services Research at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC). During her time at MDACC, she was awarded the Institute for Data Science in Oncology (IDSO) Fellowship, which provides training in applying data science to cancer care, prevention, research, and operations.
Previously, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Wayne State University (2022–2024). She received the Postdoctoral Trainee Research Award from the Postdoctoral Office at the Graduate School of Wayne State University for two consecutive years (2023–2024).
Before moving to the United States, she served as an Assistant Professor in the Industrial Engineering Department at Alzahra University in Tehran, Iran (2021–2022). She received her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Tehran in 2018, where she also completed a one-year postdoctoral fellowship (2019–2020), supported by an award from Iran's National Elites Foundation. During her PhD program, she was awarded a research grant from the International Affairs Department to serve as a visiting researcher in the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh (2016–2017).
Research interests
Her research sits at the intersection of methodological innovation and real-world application. On the methodological side, she focuses on sequential decision-making under uncertainty (Markov Decision Process, Partially Observable Markov Decision Process), multi-objective optimization, simulation, data analytics, and machine learning. On the application side, she is interested in health systems, medical decision-making — especially in cancer care and diabetes management.
Education
Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering, School of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran (2013-2018)
M.Sc. in Industrial Engineering, Department of Industrial Engineering, K. N. Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran (2010-2012)
B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering, Department of Industrial Engineering, K. N. Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran (2006-2010)
