Harshvardhan is a fourth-year BAS doctoral student with research interests in machine learning and predictive analytics. Harsh earned his bachelor’s and MBA at the Indian Institute of Management Indore in 2019 and 2021, respectively. Before starting his doctoral journey, he worked briefly as an analyst for Merck US with Aspect Ratio.

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Alumna

Faculty Position: Assistant Professor, Data Scientist, Analytical and Empirical Researcher at UMass Boston College of Management

Fahimeh Chomachaei is an alumna of Haslam’s business analytics doctoral program She earned her master's degree in industrial engineering from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in 2017. Chomachaei previously worked as a research assistant at the University of Tennessee, Space Institute and has five years of experience as a senior business analyst in several e-commerce companies. Her fields of interest include supply chain management, sharing-economy and empirical modeling in economy and marketing.

Vahid is a fourth-year BAS doctoral student and a UC Foundation Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC). Prior to joining UTC in 2017, he received his PhD in electrical engineering in 2015 and was a postdoctoral scholar in the Center for Energy Research at the University of California San Diego for two years. Disfani's research interests include optimization, data analytics, and also artificial intelligence in energy systems, logistics and education systems. He currently has active research projects focused on optimal grid integration of distributed energy resources, optimal truckload planning and AI-powered student advising systems.

Lateefah Isegen is a first-year doctoral student in management science with a concentration in analytics. Her research interests include big data analytics and predictive analytics. Before coming to UT, she worked as a pipeline integrity engineer at Stantec. She earned her bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue University in 2018, and a dual master’s in petroleum engineering and subsea engineering from the University of Houston in 2021.

Alumna

Faculty Position: Assistant Professor of Data Analytics at University of La Verne

Hui Jia is an alumna of Haslam’s business analytics doctoral program. Jia earned her bachelor’s degree from the Beijing University of Chemical Technology, China, in 2011 and her master’s degree from the Lehigh University in Pennsylvania in 2013. Her fields of interest include hospital-physician relationship in health care systems, crowdsourced data application, predictive analytics and data mining.

Yu Jiang is a fourth-year BAS doctoral student with research interests in the interface between empirical operations management and marketing, focusing on consumer returns. She earned her bachelor’s degree in coastal engineering from Harbin Engineering University in 2016, her master’s degree in civil engineering from Texas A&M University in 2018 and her master of statistics from North Carolina State University in 2021.

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Jinyi Liu is a second-year doctoral student with research interests in the operations-marketing interface. He earned his bachelor’s degree in finance from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 2021 and his master of arts in economics from the University of Rochester in 2022.

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Dawson Maddox is a first-year doctoral student with research interests in predictive analytics. He earned bachelor of science degrees in chemistry and mathematics as well as a master's in teaching at East Tennessee State University. Before joining the program, Dawson taught chemistry and physics at South Greene High School in Greeneville, Tennessee.

Pedro Masi is a first-year doctoral student who has worked as an international finance professional with a background in financial modeling and data analytics. He has experience in econometric modelling using Python, PySpark, SQL, R, and Power Bi. Masi has served as a financial specialist in banking and food industry companies in the Americas and Europe, and he is Trilingual in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. He graduated from the Duisenberg Master of Science Honours Program in Finance & Technology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and holds a master of science degree in agricultural economics at Kansas State University.

Nikhil Narayane is a third-year PhD student. His research interests lie in using deep-learning, state-of-the-art natural language processing methods for labor market analytics. Before coming to UT, he completed his master’s in business analytics with honors at the University of Texas at Dallas. Before pursuing his MS, he worked four years as deputy manager of production at ACC Limited. He earned his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, India.

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Jaachinma Somtochukwu Okafor is a second-year doctoral student with research interests in operations research and machine learning. She earned her bachelor’s degree in electrical electronic engineering from the Federal University of Technology, Owerri, Nigeria, in 2018. Before starting the doctoral program, Okafor worked as a cybersecurity analyst at Interswitch.

Abdullah Salau is a second-year doctoral student with a concentration in business analytics and statistics. His research interests lie in applied machine learning and supply chain analytics. He graduated from DePauw University in 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and actuarial science.

Adam Spannbauer, a graduate of the MSBA program who returned to the Haslam College of Business as business analytics and statistics (BAS) lecturer is now also pursuing his PhD in BAS. With industry experience from roles at Eastman and DataCamp, Spannbauer has developed a diverse skill set in analytics, programming, and education. Since joining the BAS faculty in January 2022, he has distinguished himself by earning awards for excellence in teaching and outstanding commitment to students.

Title: Lecturer

Email: aspannba@utk.edu

Christy Xia is a first-year doctoral student with research interests in data mining, NLP and machine learning in labor markets and supply chain management. She holds a master’s degree in business analytics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was awarded a merit-based scholarship and nominated for the Graduate Excellence Award. She has a background in finance and data analytics, having obtained a bachelor’s degree with honors from George Mason University, where she received the Dean's Finance Scholarship and published two articles for the CFA Institute. Xia has extensive teaching experience as a teaching assistant and research experience in the OSS Data Mining Project.

Haoqi Zhang obtained his master’s degree in electronic and computer engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 2021 and his bachelor’s degree in applied physics from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2019. Before joining the BAS PhD program, he worked as a software engineer in a medical device company.