Education
Ph.D., Civil and Systems Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, 2025
M.S., Systems Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, 2025
M.Eng., Transportation Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, 2018
B.Sc., Civil Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, 2016
Areas of Expertise
Healthcare management, operations and analytics
Artificial Intelligence and machine learning for healthcare decision-making
Data-driven operations and resource allocation
Inverse optimization and preference learning
Public health surveillance and analytics
Healthcare technology assessment and implementation
Analytics for policy and management
Biography
Farzin Ahmadi is an assistant professor of Healthcare Management in the Department
of Health Sciences at Towson University鈥檚 College of Health Professions, with courtesy
appointments at the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering and the
Johns Hopkins Data Science and AI Institute. His research develops AI-driven decision-support
systems for complex operational problems in healthcare management and public policy,
combining operations research, machine learning and optimization to improve decision-making
under uncertainty.
Dr. Ahmadi is the creator of the Johns Hopkins U.S. Measles Tracker, a county-level
surveillance system published as a research letter in JAMA (2025) and featured in
national outlets including The Atlantic, CIDRAP, and the JAMA Editor鈥檚 Summary. Earlier,
he contributed to the widely used Johns Hopkins COVID-19 Dashboard. His work has appeared
in JAMA and The Lancet Infectious Diseases and is under review at leading operations
research journals, including Operations Research and the European Journal of Operational
Research.
He earned his Ph.D. in civil and systems engineering from Johns Hopkins University
and was a Ph.D. researcher at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
(CSAIL). At Towson, he teaches courses on the U.S. health system and health information
management. Learn more at .
Research
Dr. Ahmadi鈥檚 research asks how data and optimization can make operational and clinical
decisions measurably better. His current work spans three connected areas:
- Inverse optimization and preference learning 鈥� methods for learning objectives from observed decisions, applied to personalized
nutrition and treatment planning.
- Healthcare operations under uncertainty 鈥� robust and predictive frameworks for operating-room scheduling, bed management,
and capacity planning.
- Public-health surveillance and analytics 鈥� real-time, county-level disease surveillance systems for measles and COVID-19.
Grants and Contracts
- Co-Investigator, 鈥淒evelopment of an AI-Powered Decision-Support System for Healthy
Eating,鈥� AI2AI (JHU + Amazon Initiative for Interactive AI), Johns Hopkins University,
2026 鈥� $375,000 (direct costs). PI: K. Ghobadi; Co-PI: L. Appel.
Selected Publications
- Ahmadi, F., Dong, E., Gardner, L. Tracking County-Level Measles Cases in the US. JAMA. 2025.
- Ahmadi, F., Ganjkhanloo, F., Dong, E., Parker, F., Gardner, L., Ghobadi, K. Evolving Patterns
of COVID-19 Mortality in US Counties: A Longitudinal Study of Healthcare, Socioeconomic,
and Vaccination Associations. PLOS Global Public Health. 2024.
- Dong, E., Ratcliff, J., 鈥� Ahmadi, F., 鈥� Gardner, L. M. The Johns Hopkins University CSSE COVID-19 Dashboard: data collection
process, challenges faced, and lessons learned. The Lancet Infectious Diseases. 2022.
- Ahmadi, F., et al. Similarity-Guided Inverse Optimization for Personalized Dietary Recommendations.
IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics. (Under review.)
A complete, current list is available on and in my CV.
Selected Presentations
- INFORMS Healthcare Conference, Raleigh, NC, 2026 (five presentations on dietary optimization,
surgery scheduling, and inverse optimization).
- MSOM Conference, Harvard Business School, Boston, MA, 2026 鈥� 鈥淣on-identifiability
and Statistical Inference in Inverse Optimization.鈥�
- HICSS 59 Symposium on Socio-Technical Ecosystems for Future Digital Health, Maui,
HI, 2026 (invited panelist).
- Conference on Health IT and Analytics (CHITA), Washington, D.C., 2026 鈥� real-time
county-level measles surveillance.
Selected Media Mentions
Professional Memberships
- Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)
- Manufacturing and Service Operations Management Society (MSOM)
- Health Applications Society (HAS)
- American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM)
- Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM)
Professional Service
- Peer Reviewer, PLOS Global Public Health (2024鈥�2026).
- President, Johns Hopkins University INFORMS Student Chapter (2022鈥�2024).
- Editorial Board Member, OR/MS Tomorrow (2022鈥�2024).
- Session and Mini-track Chair, INFORMS, HICSS, and POMS conferences (2023鈥�2027).
Gallery of Featured Work
- S. Measles Tracker (Johns Hopkins CSSE) 鈥�
Teaching
- HLTH 207: Health System of the U.S.
- HCMN 435: Health Information Management
