Amir Rastpour

Dr. Amir Rastpour is an Associate Professor of Operations Management at the Faculty of Business and Information Technology (FBIT), Ontario Tech University. He holds a PhD in Operations Management from the University of Alberta School of Business (2015), followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the Ivey Business School, Western University (2017). His research focuses on applying operations research methodologies to healthcare challenges, including queuing theory, stochastic models, and big data analytics for optimizing healthcare operations. Specific interests include demand prediction for medical facilities, emergency medical services optimization, and quasi-birth-death (QBD) process analysis in healthcare systems.

Education:

• PhD in Operations Management, University of Alberta School of Business (2015)
• Postdoctoral Fellow, Ivey Business School, Western University (2017)
• Visiting PhD Student, University of Chicago Booth School of Business (2014)

Research Interests: Dr. Rastpour’s work emphasizes healthcare applications, including demand forecasting for heart attack treatment facilities, emergency medical services optimization, and QBD process modeling. His methods include queuing theory, count regression models, and empirical analysis to address both strategic and operational challenges in healthcare delivery. Recent work explores machine learning for predicting patient wait times and dynamic programming for ambulance fleet management.

Awards:

• Nominated for Ontario Tech University Student Choice Teaching Award (2019)
• INFORMS Health Applications Society Finalist for Best Student Paper (2015)
• CORS Best Student Paper in Open Category (2015)
• University of Alberta Scholarships and Awards (2009–2014)

Teaching and Advising: Dr. Rastpour teaches statistics and operations management courses, emphasizing hands-on data analysis and decision-making skills. His teaching style includes real-world examples and interactive sessions to enhance student learning. He collaborates on grants focused on healthcare operations and supply chain resilience.

Labs and Teams: He is affiliated with the Business Analytics & AI Research Group at FBIT, which bridges computational methods with business challenges in marketing and operations management. His work contributes to initiatives like AI in healthcare collaboration with Lakeridge Health.