Sara Shashaani
Associate Professor
- Phone: 919.515.6400
- Email: sshasha2@ncsu.edu
- Office: 4175 Fitts-Woolard Hall
- Website: https://shashaani.wordpress.ncsu.edu
Sara Shashaani joined the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering as an assistant professor in January 2019. Prior to joining the NC State faculty, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan, where she worked on designing and improving probabilistic predictive models, specifically used for hurricane-induced power outages, with challenges in highly imbalanced datasets and a large set of explanatory variables. Her dissertation research in the area of derivative-free simulation optimization awarded her a Ph.D. degree in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University in 2016.
Research Interests
Shashaani’s research interests include stochastic optimization and Monte Carlo methodology, theory and algorithms, their integration with data science and operations research, and their applications in long-term important problems in society.
Shashaani’s personal research website
Education
| Degree | Program | School | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ph.D. | Doctor of Philosophy in Industrial Engineering | Purdue University | 2016 |
| MSISEOR | Master of Science in Industrial and Systems Engineering and Operations Research | Virginia Tech | 2014 |
| MSIE | Master of Science in Industrial Engineering | Purdue University | 2011 |
| BSIE | Bachelor of Science in Applied Computing | Southern Cross University | 2009 |
| BSIE | Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering | Iran University of Science and Technology | 2008 |
Honors and Awards
- 2024 | ISE Bowman Faculty Scholar Award
- 2023 | IISE Modeling and Simulation Division Teaching Award
- 2022 | Outstanding Contribution in Reviewing, Journal of Simulation
- 2022 | Distinguished Service as the Proceedings Editor, Winter Simulation Conference
- 2022 | Research Innovation Seed Funding Award, North Carolina State University
- 2021 | Faculty Research and Professional Development Award, North Carolina State University
- 2020 | Finalist in Best Service Science Paper Competition, Service Science Cluster of INFORMS
- 2019 | Outstanding Reviewer Award, Winter Simulation Conference
- 2016 | Best Student Paper Award, Ph.D. Colloquium, Winter Simulation Conference
- 2015 | Ross Fellowship Award, Purdue University
- 2014 | Outstanding Teaching Assistant, ISE Virginia Tech
- 2012 | Visiting Researcher Summer Scholarship, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology & Virginia Tech
Discover more about Sara Shashaani
Publications
- Complexity of Zeroth- and First-Order Stochastic Trust-Region Algorithms
- Ha, Y., Shashaani, S., & Pasupathy, R. (2025, September 17), SIAM Journal on Optimization, Vol. 35, pp. 2098–2127. https://doi.org/10.1137/24M1664484
- Dynamic Calibration Framework for Digital Twins Using Active Learning and Conformal Prediction
- Sürer, Ö., & Shashaani, S. (2025, December 7). , (Vol. 12). Vol. 12. https://doi.org/10.1109/wsc68292.2025.11338975
- Dynamic Calibration of Digital Twin via Stochastic Simulation: A Wind Energy Case Study
- Jeon, Y., Shashaani, S., Byon, E., & Jain, P. (2025, December 7). , (Vol. 12). Vol. 12. https://doi.org/10.1109/wsc68292.2025.11338923
- Worst-Case Approximations for Robust Analysis in Multiserver Queues and Queuing Networks
- Eun, H.-K., Shashaani, S., & Barton, R. R. (2025, December 7). , (Vol. 12). Vol. 12. https://doi.org/10.1109/wsc68292.2025.11339009
- Building Trees for Probabilistic Prediction via Scoring Rules
- Shashaani, S., Sürer, Ö., Plumlee, M., & Guikema, S. (2024, April 15), Technometrics, Vol. 5. https://doi.org/10.1080/00401706.2024.2343062
- Calibrating Digital Twins via Bayesian Optimization with a Root Finding Strategy
- Jeon, Y., & Shashaani, S. (2024, December 15), 2024 WINTER SIMULATION CONFERENCE, WSC, pp. 335–346. https://doi.org/10.1109/WSC63780.2024.10838781
- Code and Data Repository for Two-Stage Estimation and Variance Modeling for Latency-Constrained Variational Quantum Algorithms
- Ha, Y., Shashaani, S., & Menickelly, M. (2024, November 27), INFORMS Journal on Computing. https://doi.org/10.1287/ijoc.2024.0575.cd
- Comparative Analysis of Distance Metrics for Distributionally Robust Optimization in Queuing Systems: Wasserstein vs. Kingman
- Eun, H.-K., Shashaani, S., & Barton, R. R. (2024, December 15), 2024 WINTER SIMULATION CONFERENCE, WSC, pp. 3368–3379. https://doi.org/10.1109/WSC63780.2024.10838888
- Data Farming the Parameters of Simulation-Optimization Solvers
- Shashaani, S., Eckman, D., & Sanchez, S. (2024, July 23), ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation, Vol. 34. https://doi.org/10.1145/3680282
- Iteration complexity and finite-time efficiency of adaptive sampling trust-region methods for stochastic derivative-free optimization
- Ha, Y., & Shashaani, S. (2024, March 27), IISE Transactions, Vol. 4. https://doi.org/10.1080/24725854.2024.2335513
