News

Congratulations to Atahan Bayir, a PhD student in the the Department of Management Science and Engineering and a member of the Health AI and Analytics Lab, for receiving the Fraser Research Award.  

Co-supervised by Dr. Safa Erenay and Dr. Sibel Alumur Alev, Atahan was recognized for his outstanding research on vascular access device selection and infection prevention in hospital settings. The Fraser Research Award is awarded annually to the author of the best research paper written by a MASc or PhD student in the Department of Management Sciences and Engineering during the previous three academic terms.

Members of the Health AI & Analytics Lab were actively engaged at the 2026 Canadian Operational Research Society (CORS) Conference, with several students presenting their research and earning recognitions in prestigious competitions. The conference highlighted the breadth of the lab’s work in healthcare operations, service systems, and applied analytics, with multiple students receiving finalist and award distinctions across several categories. 

Congratulations to Ahmed Fawzy, Adam Drakich, Jessie Fan, Chris Wang, Gisele Zhang, Hamid Arzani, Larissa Troper, and Amirmohammad Marshalpirgheybi for their outstanding recognitions!  

At the CORS 2026 Annual Conference, Health AI & Analytics Lab directors were appointed to leadership roles within the Canadian Operational Research Society (CORS). Over the next year, Dr. Houra Mahmoudzadeh will serve as President, and Dr. Safa Erenay as Track Organizer for the Healthcare Operational Research Special Interest Group. 

A paper by Scholar Sun, a research assistant in the Health AI and Analytics Lab, published in the IISE Transactions on Healthcare Engineering, was featured as a selected article in the May 2026 issue of the ISE Magazine. The paper tackles a large-scale complex problem in radiation therapy for cancer patients and devises methodologies for ensuring the complex model solution can be translated into a realistically deliverable treatment plan in clinics. This work was supervised by Prof. Houra Mahmoudzadeh and co-authored by collaborators from the Waterloo Regional Health Network (WRHN) Cancer Centre. Scholar had previously won the CORS Undergraduate Paper Competition and received the Honorable Mention of the INFORMS Undergraduate Operations Research Prize.

A student capstone team designed and delivered Picktacular, an adaptive decision‑support dashboard designed to help hospitals better manage operating room (OR) supply pick‑lists. Developed in collaboration with Cambridge Memorial Hospital (CMH) and supervised by Prof. Houra Mahmoudzadeh and Prof. Stan Dimitrov, the project earned the Sustainable Development Capstone Design Award in Management Science and Engineering. Congratulations Agishan Thaya, Callum Gillies, Curtis Tse, Graydon Power, and Liam Mitchell for the amazing work! 

Professor Houra Mahmoudzadeh and graduate student Rana Shirvai participated in the HOpeR Summer School 2025, hosted at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) from August 18–22, 2025. The program brought together researchers, graduate students, and healthcare professionals for training in healthcare operational research, machine learning, and healthcare systems optimization. Prof. Mahmoudzadeh delivered a plenary session titled “Optimizing Cancer Care: From Data to Decisions”, and Rana presented her research on inverse optimization for radiation therapy as part of the "This Is My Research" series. 

Three of our lab's outstanding students earned recognitions at three different student paper competitions during the Canadian Operational Research Society's Annual Conference (CORS 2025) which was held in Edmonton.

Please join us in congratulating:

• Esma Agkun – Honourable Mention in the Health Care Operational Research (HCOR) SIG Student Paper Competition
• Mina Torabi Milani – Runner Up in the Gilbert Laporte Student Paper Award
• Larissa Troper  – Honourable Mention in the CORS student paper competition - Undergraduate Category

A paper co-authored by doctoral student Esma Agkun and Dr. Safa Erenay was selected as a finalist of the College of Healthcare Operations Management (CHOM) Best Paper Competition at the POMS 2025 conference held in Atlanta, GA. This paper was one of four finalists out of 55 paper submissions, and competed against other finalists from Colombia University, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Miami University. Congratulations to all authors, who received the honourable mention certificate and award. 

Congratulations to our incoming lab member, Sean Rose, for being selected as a recipient of the Vector Scholarship in AI. Sean will be pursuing an MASc in Management Science and Engineering under the supervision of Professor Houra Mahmoudzadeh starting in Fall 2025.