Raed Al Kontar receives promotion to associate professor with tenure
Since joining the U-M IOE department he has developed and taught data analytics courses that impact students and secured $1.75 million in research funding.
On May 16, the University of Michigan (U-M) Board of Regents approved a recommendation for the promotion of Dr. Raed Al Kontar, now an associate professor of industrial and operations engineering with tenure.
Dr. Al Kontar joined the U-M IOE faculty in September 2018. He received his PhD in Industrial and Systems Engineering in 2018 and an MS in Statistics in 2017 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also earned his BS in Civil and Environmental Engineering with a minor in Mathematics from the American University of Beirut in 2014.
Since joining the U-M IOE department, Raed has developed and taught data analytics courses that impact students at the core undergraduate, Master’s, and PhD levels. These include IOE 691: Modern Bayesian Data Science, STAT/IOE 570: Design of Experiments, and IOE 265: Probability and Statistics for Engineers. He has also successfully advised and graduated 3 PhD students, two of whom have recently become assistant professors at esteemed universities.
“It is an honor to be granted this promotion,” said Kontar. “Looking back at my journey, I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to work alongside brilliant students who have played a significant role in shaping my career.”
In addition to his teaching, Dr. Al Kontar is highly involved in research revolving around personalized, distributed, and collaborative data science. Dr. Al Kontar and his collaborators secured over $3 million in funding, of which Dr. Al Kontar’s portion is $1.75 million. This includes a prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award, among many other grants.
He is a named author on over 34 journal papers, 23 of which were led by PhD students advised by him. Additionally, his research has won 12 best paper awards across INFORMS, ASA and IISE in the past five years.
“I am now more motivated than ever to generate impactful research and become a leader in the field of personalized and distributed data analytics,” said Kontar. “Additionally, I am eager to delve further into applications and bring the developed methods to a practical perspective.”