Research Overview

Publications associated with the projects can be found on the Google Scholar page. 

Concussion Management:

Challenge: It is the most common type of traumatic brain injury, an emergent public health issue. Recent studies suggest links between concussions and long-term consequences such as cognitive impairment and neurodegenerative disease.

Published Papers:

1. Lahijanian, B., Pandey, H., Schmidt, J., Lynall, R., Garcia, G. “Quantifying the Diagnostic Utility of Baseline Testing: An Analysis of the NCAA-DoD CARE Consortium Dataset” (2024). The American Journal of Sports Medicine. (Accepted) (*IF: 6.06).

Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program:

Challenge: Nearly 1/5 of hospital patients are readmitted within 30 days, and insurers are administering financial penalties to hospitals with poor readmission rates. 

Improving hospital care strategies that avoid financial penalties from punitive hospital readmission reduction policies while balancing quality of care, the cost of care, and the hospital's readmission reduction goals.

Published Papers:

1. Alvarado, M., Lahijanian, B., and Lawley, M. “Penalty and Incentive Modeling for Hospital Readmission Reduction.” (2023). 36. Operations Research for Health Care. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orhc.2022.100376 

2. Lahijanian, B. and Alvarado, M. “Care Strategies for Reducing Hospital Readmissions using Stochastic Programming.” (2021). 9 (940), 1-21. Healthcare, (*IF: 2.645). DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare9080940

3. Lahijanian, B. and Alvarado, M. “A Statistical Analysis of Penalty vs. Incentive Designs for Hospital Readmission.” (2019).  In Proceedings of the 2020 IISE Annual Conference and Expo, Orlando, FL, (pp. 1-6). [PDF]

Health Insurance Decision-Making:

Challenge: Only 4% of the US population accurately understands basic health insurance terms. Due to a lack of knowledge, selecting a health insurance plan is a complex decision that can have significant health and financial impacts. 

The individual's objective is to select a minimum-cost health insurance plan based on health premiums, covered/ uncovered expenses, and deductibles for a whole year.

Working Paper: Lahijanian, B. and Alvarado, M.. “Health Insurance Plan Selection under Uncertainty using Stochastic Integer Programming.” Target Journal: IISE Transactions on Healthcare.

Mean-risk stochastic integer programming:

Challenge: Solving complicated constraints that prevent scenario separation and high data variability in large-scale problems

Developing a Fenchel decomposition algorithm for mean-risk SIPs with fixed recourse to address this problem. 

Working Paper: Lahijanian, B., Alvarado, M., and Ntaimo, L. “Decomposition Algorithm for Mean-risk Stochastic Integer Programming Models.” Target Journal: INFORMS Journal on Computing.

Vaccine Supply Chain:

Collaborators: Brazilian Ministry of Health

Flipped Classroom Methods for Generation Z Engineering Students:

Collaborators: Dr. Michelle Alvarado, Dr. Katie Basinger, and Diego Alvarado

Published Papers:

1. Alvarado, M.M., Basinger, K.L., Lahijanian, B., and Alvarado, D. “Video Length Preferences for Engineering Students: Case Study of a Flipped Software Course.” (2022). Advances in Engineering Education Journal.  

2. Basinger, K.L., Alvarado, D., Ortega, A.V., Hartless, D.G., Lahijanian, B. and Alvarado, M.M. “Creating ACTIVE Learning in an Online Environment.” (2021). In 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access. 

3. Lahijanian, B., Basinger, K., Karaca, M., Alvarado, D., Buzard, B., and Alvarado, M. “Flipped Classroom Video Engagement for Generation Z Engineering Students.” (2020). In Proceedings of the 2020 IISE Annual Conference and Expo (pp. 1-6). 

4. Alvarado, M.M., Basinger, K.L., Alvarado, D. and Lahijanian, B. “Strategies for flipped classroom video development: educating generation Z engineering students.” (2020). In 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access. 

5. Alvarado, M., Basinger, K., Lahijanian, B. and Alvarado, D. “Teaching simulation to Generation Z engineering students: Lessons learned from a flipped classroom pilot study.” (2020). In 2020 Winter Simulation Conference (WSC) (pp. 3248-3259). IEEE.