Agha Iqbal Ali

Agha Iqbal Ali is Karen and Chuck Peters Family Endowed Professor at the Isenberg School of Management. He was founding Chairman of the Operations Information Management from Spring 2013-Spring 2019, having served as Chairman of the Finance and Operations Management Department from Fall 2006 to Fall 2012.  Professor Ali emphasizes the complexity of decision-making in the 21st century when telling his students that, “the low-hanging fruit of managerial decisions has been picked. Future managers and leaders of the world need to understand the importance and necessity of complex-decision making tools.” His thoughts reflect his extensive academic training in the mathematical and cybernetic sciences, which culminated with a Ph.D. in Operations Research. Professor Ali has developed and implemented mathematical models of complex business processes over the past five decades. His experience spans strategic, tactical and operational decision making in regional infrastructure, business logistics, productivity assessment and performance evaluation, demand-shortfall management, supply chains, and man-power chains.  Whether examining the operations of a small manufacturing company or a major corporation, he taps a rich historically-acquired knowledge base to incisively pinpoint inefficiencies in infrastructure, practices and protocols that hinder productivity and competitive advantage. He advocates optimizing multi-criteria objectives to reveal intrinsic, complex managerial trade-offs and impacts of decision alternatives. Professor Ali teaches Introductory Operations Management and Prescriptive Analytics for Business. He has given seminars and courses at universities around the globe, advised upper management of public and private sector organizations, some of which are Fortune 500. He served as Associate Editor for Operations Research; his scholarly articles have appeared in prestigious journals including Operations Research, Management Science, Networks, Naval Research Logistics, Journal of the Operational Research Society, and European Journal of Operational Research.