Prof. Sara Shashaani

  • Associate Professor, Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
  • Bowman Faculty Scholar
  • Associated Faculty, Operations Research Graduate Program
  • North Carolina State University
  • email: sshasha2[at]ncsu[dot]edu
  • address: 915 Partners Way, Room 4175 Raleigh, NC 27695-7906.

Research areas: Monte Carlo simulation and stochastic optimization with focus on operations research and data science. Check out the research page for more details on ongoing work of our group, and the news page for recent developments. [CV]

Short Bio:

Sara Shashaani is an Associate Professor and Bowman Faculty Scholar in the Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at North Carolina State University. Her research lies at the intersection of stochastic optimization and Monte Carlo simulation, with a focus on zeroth-order methods for nonconvex problems and digital twin methodologies. She is a 2024 Goodnight Innovator and a 2025 MGB-SIAM Early Career Fellow. She received the Best Contributed Paper Award at the 2025 Winter Simulation Conference, and her doctoral student was recognized as a second-place winner of the 2025 IISE Pritsker Doctoral Dissertation Award. Dr. Shashaani has served the INFORMS Simulation Society as an elected board member and is a co-creator of SimOpt, an open-source library for simulation optimization. Her research has had impact across a range of application domains, including renewable energy, climate adaptation, advanced manufacturing, and public health.

Grants:

  • External:
    • Department of Energy Office of Electricity, Winner of Phase 1 Track 1 Digitizing Utilities Prize Round 2, 2024
    • National Science Foundation OAC-2410949, Collaborative Research: Elements: A Computational and Data-Capable Environment for Stochastic Simulation Optimization, 2024 – 2028
    • Office of Naval Research N000142412398, Fast and Scalable Stochastic Derivative-free Optimization, 2024 – 2027
    • North Carolina Department of Justice, Advancing the Sustainability and Resiliency of Lagoon Systems in Eastern North Carolina: Tool Development and Utilization, 2024 – 2026
    • National Science Foundation CMMI-2226347, Collaborative Research: Calibrating Digital Twins in the Era of Big Data with Stochastic Optimization, 2023 – 2026.
    • Association for American University Women Research Publication Grant in Engineering, Medicine and Science, American Educational Research Association, 2022-2023
  • Internal:
    • Research Innovation Seed Funding Award, North Carolina State University, 2022
    • Faculty Research and Professional Development Award, North Carolina State University, 2021

Recent Honors and Awards:

  • Best Contributed Applied Paper, Winter Simulation Conference Proceedings, 2025
  • IMSI Long Program Fellow, University of Chicago, 2025
  • 2024-2028 MGB-SIAM Early Career Fellow, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, 2025
  • 2024-25 Goodnight Early Career Innovator, NCSU, 2024
  • ISE Bowman Faculty Scholar at NCSU, 2024
  • IISE Modeling and Simulation Division Teaching Award, 2023
  • Outstanding Contribution in Reviewing, Journal of Simulation, 2022
  • Distinguished Service as the Proceedings Editor, Winter Simulation Conference, 2022
  • Outstanding Reviewer, INFORMS Simulation Society and Winter Simulation Conference, 2019
  • Stage One Winner (top 25 in 300 teams), CMS Artificial Intelligence Health Outcomes Challenge, 2019
  • Best Student Paper Award, PhD Colloquium, Winter Simulation Conference, 2016

Awards of Supervised Students:

  • First Place, WSC 2025 PhD Colloquium Best Student Paper Award: Yongseok Jeon, 2025
  • Second Place, IISE Pritsker’s Doctoral Dissertation Award: Yunsoo Ha, 2025
  • NCSU ISE Shook Mentorship Award: Yongseok Jeon, 2025
  • Winter Simulation Conference Diversity Award, INFORMS Simulation Society: HK Eun, 2024
  • Outstanding Reviewer of Simulation Optimization Track, Winter Simulation Conference: Yunsoo Ha, 2024
  • ISE Distinguished Dissertation Award: Yunsoo Ha, 2024
  • ISE Outstanding Doctoral Student of the Year: Kimia Vahdat, 2022
  • International Simio Student Competition, 2022
    • First Place: Claudia Donahue and Alexej Lozevski
    • Honorable Mention: Daniel Malerich and Kelby Mace
  • Finalist, Best Student Paper Competition, INFORMS Service Science, 2020
    • with L. Mao, K. Vahdat, and J. Swann
  • Finalist, Best Student Poster Competition, INFORMS Annual Meeting, 2020
    • with K. Vahdat

Recent Service: 

  • Associate Editor, Naval Research Logistics, 2025-
  • Associate Editor, Operations Research, 2025-
  • Associate Editor, Journal of Simulation, 2024-2029
  • ISMP 2027 Stream Organizer for Derivative-free and Simulation-based Optimization
  • Co-organizer: I-SIM 2026
  • Journal Referee:
    • Operations Research (OPRE), EURO Journal on Computational Optimization (EJCOMP), European Journal on Operations Research (EJOR), Computers and Operations Research (CAOR), Optimization Methods and Software (OMS), Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications (JOTA), Mathematical Programming, SIAM Journal on Optimization (SIOPT), Journal of Simulation (JOS), ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation (TOMACS), IISE Transactions, Vietnam Journal of Mathematics (VJOM), Entropy, Risk Analysis, System Dynamics, INFORMS Journal on Computing (IJOC), Management Science
  • Co-creator of SimOpt: an open-source testbed of simulation optimization problems and solvers
  • Co-organizer of SimOpt Workshops, Winter Simulation Conference, 2022-2025
  • PhD Colloquium co-Chiar, Winter Simulation Conference, 2025-9
  • Analysis Methodology Track co-Chair, Winter Simulation Conference, 2023 and 2026
  • Proceedings co-Editor, Winter Simulation Conference, 2022
  • “Derivative-free Optimization” Cluster Chair, International Conference on Continuous Optimization (ICCOPT), 2022

Education and Prior Experience:

  • Assistant Prof., Industrial and Systems Engineering, North Carolina State University
  • Postdoc, Industrial and Operations Engineering, University of Michigan
  • PhD, Industrial Engineering, Purdue University
  • MSc, Operations Research, Virginia Tech
  • MSc, Industrial Engineering, Purdue University
  • BSc, Applied Computing, Southern Cross University
  • BSc, Industrial Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology