Dr. Aliaa Alnaggar

As our society and technology evolve, uncertainty remains a constant.

How does a hospital manage its scarce resources during unexpected surges? How do gig-economy businesses, like Uber, effectively manage a remote workforce made up of individuals with spasmodic availability? Bringing clarity to these unknowns is what inspires Dr. Aliaa Alnaggar’s industrial engineering research and practice.

Applying mathematical optimization and probability theory, Alnaggar’s research informs new tools, algorithms and policies that enable organizations to make optimal decisions when facing perplexity. “There is a wide variety of problems you can address with these tools and a lot of room for creativity and innovation,” she says.

Alnaggar’s research spans a range of economic sectors, with a focus on the sharing economy, retail and healthcare. Currently, she is working on an application that will make it easier for hospital networks to distribute their limited resources, while balancing important variables such as fair access to care across different geographic regions. It is her belief that “sometimes a complicated mathematical model can provide you surprisingly simple operational policies.”