When Professor Agha Iqbal Ali was appointed to the Karen and Chuck Peters’ Family Endowed Professorship in 2019, he had been sharing his expertise in operations management, supply chain issues, and the implementation of mathematical programming algorithms with students at the Isenberg School of Management for 32 years. In that time, he had led a significant expansion of the operations and information management department, earned three teaching awards, and established himself as an adviser to upper management at public and private companies, some of which were in the Fortune 500.
His teaching emphasizes the need to understand complex decision-making tools and the ways in which inefficiencies in infrastructure, practices and protocols can hinder productivity and competitive advantage.
His research continually elevates Isenberg’s academic reputation by focusing on pressing operational issues, including data analysis, creating easier consumer access to goods and services, and tackling delays in providing relief supplies to disaster victims – work for which he was awarded the Goodeve Medal from the Operational Research Society in 2018. He is also involved in addressing growing concerns about algorithmic bias at UMass Amherst’s Computational Social Science Institute.
