Bagley College of Engineering welcomes new computer science and engineering department head
August 24, 2018
A recognized leader in the field of computational intelligence with strong ties to the state of Mississippi is the new department head for computer science and engineering at Mississippi State University.
Dr. Shahram Rahimi is the new department head for computer science & engineering in Mississippi State’s Bagley College of Engineering.
Shahram Rahimi joined the Bagley College of Engineering faculty as the new computer science and engineering department head on August 1. He comes to Mississippi State after 16 years at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, including the last four as that university’s chair of the department of computer science.
“I am excited to join a group of brilliant faculty at Mississippi State and to be back in the state I call home,” Rahimi said.
Rahimi earned his Ph.D. in computational science from the University of Southern Mississippi in 2002. He also earned a pair of master’s degrees from USM, the first in computer engineering technology in 1998 followed by a second in computer science in 1999. He also holds a master’s degree in computer architecture from Sharif University and a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from the National University of Iran.
“I am excited that Dr. Rahimi is joining the Bagley College of Engineering as our newest department head,” said Jason Keith, dean of the Bagley College of Engineering. “His strong leadership experience, research aptitude, outreach experience, and enthusiasm made him stand out as the top candidate in our national search.”
Rahimi has an extensive background in both academia and the private sector. He is a recognized leader in artificial intelligence with over 190 peer-reviewed publications and several patents or pending patents in the area. He has also served as the Editor-in-Chief of two major journals in Computational Intelligence and sits on the editorial board of several others. Additionally, Rahimi serves as a member of the New Standards Committee in Computational Intelligence for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
He also developed an intelligent algorithm for patient flow optimization and staffing that is currently used in more than 800 emergency departments across the country. It was named a Top 10 AI Technology for Healthcare in 2018 by Healthcare Tech Outlook.
Rahimi often consults with senior staff and high-ranking administration at the State Department and Department of Defense on predictive analytics for forging policy. The game theory/machine learning hybrid system that he and his team developed is regularly used for decision support when crafting foreign policy.
Rahimi has also organized over 15 conferences on computational intelligence and multi-agent systems over the past two decades and has served as principal investigator for several federally and industry funded research projects.
He replaces former department head Donna Reese, who retired from the Bagley College of Engineering in December 2017.
The Bagley College of Engineering is online at www.bagley.msstate.edu and can be found on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube at @msuengineering.
Mississippi State University is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.
By: Philip Allison