PIAS-Lab
The Public Impact Analytics Science Lab (PIAS-Lab) at Harvard, founded and directed by Soroush Saghafian, is devoted to advancing and applying the science of analytics to solving societal problems that can have a public impact. The lab’s mission is to improve societal outcomes by developing, integrating, and using appropriate analytical tools in Operations Research, Machine Learning and Big Data, Decision Making, Statistics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and related fields.
The Lab is currently mainly focusing on the healthcare sector and is collaborating with the Statistical Reinforcement Learning Lab at Harvard, the Harvard Center for Health Decision Science, the Harvard Data Science Initiative, and various other organizations, including the Mayo Clinic, the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), the Dana Faber Cancer Institute, the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
The PIAS-LAB is hosted by the Harvard Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government (M-RCBG). The mission of M-RCBG is to advance the state of knowledge and policy analysis concerning some of society’s most challenging problems at the interface of the public and private sectors.
The PIAS-LAB has access to high computational power and extremely secure data storage clusters. Specifically, the lab uses the FAS Secure Environment (FASSE), a highly secure multi-tenant cluster environment at Harvard that allows access to a secure enclave for the analysis of sensitive datasets. FASSE currently has 24 nodes and 48 cores per node.
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Book Endorsements
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Postdoctoral Fellows
Hossein Hejazian
Postdoctoral Fellow
Sina Aghaei
Postdoctoral Fellow
Minmin Zhang
Postdoctoral Fellow
Ibrahima Dieye
Postdoctoral Fellow
PhD Students
Sidian Sylvia Lin
PhD Student
Jacob Jameson
PhD Student
Former Postdoctoral Fellows
Agni Orfanoudaki
Former Postdoctoral Fellow
Current Position: Associate Professor of Operations Management at the Saïd Business School, Oxford University
Mohammad Zhalechian
Former Postdoctoral Fellow
Current Position: Assistant Professor of Operations and Decision Technologies at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University
Arshya Feizi
Former Postdoctoral Fellow
Current Position: Associate at Analysis Group
Senior Visiting Fellows
Solmaz Rashidi
Postdoctoral Felllow
Kye Rhee
Senior Vice President and Aetna Chief Medical Officer at CVS Health, and Senior Fellow at the Harvard Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government.
Brian Denton
Stephen M. Pollack Professor of Industrial and Operations Engineering, and Department Chair
Miklós Szócska
Former Minister of State for Health of Hungary, the Director of The Health Services Management Training Centre
Adel Hamaizia
Managing Director at London-based Highbridge Advisory
Omar Robles
Managing Partner at Emerging Health Consulting and Senior Fellow at the Harvard Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government
Abdullah Alibrahim
Assistant Professor of Industrial & Management Systems Engineering at the College of Engineering & Petroleum, Kuwait University
Contact us
Lab’s Contact Person:
Catherine Kearns
Phone: 617-384-7340
Email: catherine_kearns@hks.harvard.edu
Lab’s Mailing Address:
Harvard Kennedy School
Mailbox 37
79 JFK Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Lab’s Twitter Account:
@PIASLab
Lab’s LinkedIn Account:
Public Impact Analytics Science Lab (PIAS-Lab) at Harvard
Recent Publications
Shakeri, M., M. Bijvank, and S. Saghafian. n.d. “Who to See Next? Guiding Physicians With Time-Dependent Patient Selection Policies Under Shift Work.” View PDF
Jameson, J., S. Saghafian, R. Huckman, N. Hodgson, and J. Baugh. n.d. “The Impact of Batching Advanced Imaging Tests in Emergency Departments.” View PDF
Zhalechian, M., S. Saghafian, and O. Robles. n.d. “Harmonizing Safety and Speed: A Human-Algorithm Approach to Enhance the FDA’s Medical Device Clearance Policy.” View PDF
Dean, A., A. Orfanoudaki, S. Saghafian, K. Song, H.A. Chakkera, and C.B. Cook. n.d. “Algorithm, Human, or the Centaur: How to Enhance Clinical Care?.” View PDF
Boloori, A., Saghafian, and S.J. Traub. n.d. “Understanding the Opioid Epidemic: Human-Based Versus Algorithmic-Based Perceptions, Treatments, and Guidelines.” View PDF
Forthcoming:
Feizi, A., A. Orfanoudaki, S. Saghafian, Wayne Martini, and A. Hodgson. 2026. “Vertical Patient Streaming in Emergency Departments”. Management Science.