Babak Heydari

Associate Professor,  Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Co-Program Director,  Engineering Management
Affiliated Faculty,  School for Public Policy and Urban Affairs
Affiliated Faculty,  Network Science Institute

Contact

Social Media

Office

  • 177 HU, 1218
  • 617.373.5507

Lab

  • Dana 245

Research Focus

Socio-technical systems, systems engineering and design, social and economic networks, resilience of networked systems, computational social sciences, platform-based systems, sharing economy systems, computational social sciences, game theory, artificial intelligence

About

Babak Heydari is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering and Co-Program Director of the Master of Science in Engineering Management program. He is also Director of the Multi-AGent Intelligent Complex Systems (MAGICS) Lab, and affiliate faculty at the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and the Network Science Institute. His research interests include socio-technical systems, artificial intelligence, systems engineering and design, social and economic networks, resilience of complex systems, computational social sciences, platform-based systems, sharing economy, and computational social sciences. He holds several leadership positions such as Chair of Executive Committee, Council of Engineering Systems Universities (CESUN); Associate Editor of the Wiley Systems Engineering Journal and the ASME Journal of Mechanical Design; Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee, ETH-Singapore Program Future Resilient Systems; and Member of the scientific advisory board of Future Resilient Systems (FRS). Dr. Heydari is a National Science Foundation CAREER Award recipient. He earned his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley.

Education

  • Ph.D., EECS, University of California, Berkeley, 2008
  • M.Sc., EECS, University of California, Berkeley, 2005
  • Graduate Certificate, UC Berkeley, Management of Technology, 2006
  • B.Sc., EE and Chemistry, Sharif University of Technology, 2002

Honors & Awards

  • 2022 College of Engineering Faculty Fellow
  • National Science Foundation CAREER Award
  • Wiley Systems Engineering Journal Best Paper Award
  • Best Paper Award, Journal of Systems Engineering, 2016

Leadership Positions

Research Overview

Socio-technical systems, systems engineering and design, social and economic networks, resilience of networked systems, computational social sciences, platform-based systems, sharing economy systems, computational social sciences, game theory, artificial intelligence

Modern engineered systems are increasingly connected, with complex interactions among social and technical aspects, both during the design process and after fielding. While traditional engineering design has focused on designing an optimal technical artifact, there is an increasing recognition that social and organizational aspects of how designers collaborate and create, and how systems co-evolve with the human and built environments through use, are equally important drivers of value. Additionally, the rise of new sources of data and increased availability thereof creates many opportunities to extend design research into the sociotechnical realm.

My research takes a sociotechnical perspective towards the design and governance of complex engineering systems, bringing together elements of technical design, models of human behavior, and policy and regulation perspectives.

MAGICS Lab logo

Multi-AGent Intelligent Complex Systems Lab (MAGICS Lab)

In MAGICS Lab, we take a sociotechnical perspective towards the design and governance of complex engineering systems, bringing together elements of technical design, models of human behavior, and policy and regulation perspectives.

MAGICS Lab

Selected Research Projects

Selected Journal Publications

  • Cao, Qingtao, Heydari, Babak (2022). Micro-level social structures and the success of COVID-19 national policies. Nature Computational Science, 2(9),595-604. 10.1038/S43588-022-00314-0
  • Abouk, Rahi, and Babak Heydari. “The immediate effect of COVID-19 policies on social-distancing behavior in the United States.” Public Health Reports 136.2 (2021): 245-252.
  • Chen, Qiliang, Babak Heydari, and Mohsen Moghaddam. “Leveraging Task Modularity in Reinforcement Learning for Adaptable Industry 4.0 Automation.” Journal of Mechanical Design (2021): 1-35.
  • Ke, Laiyang, Dan O’Brien, and Babak Heydari. “Airbnb and Neighborhood Crime: The Incursion of Tourists or the Erosion of Local Social Dynamics?.” Available at SSRN 3725823 (2020).
  • Heydari, Babak, Pedram Heydari, and Mohsen Mosleh. “Not all bridges connect: Integration in multi-community networks.” The Journal of Mathematical Sociology 44.4 (2020): 199-220.
  • A.Ehsanfar, B. Heydari, An Incentive Compatible Scheme for Electricity Cooperatives: Axiomatic Approach, IEEE Transactions on Smart Grids, 9(2), 2018, 1416-1424
  • M. Mosleh, B. Heydari, Fair Topologies: Community Structure and Network Hubs Drive Emergence of Fairness Norms, Scientific Reports, 2686(7), 2017
  • M. Mosleh, K. Dalili, B.Heydari, Distributed or Monolithic? A Computational Architecture Decision Framework, IEEE Systems Journal, 1(12), 2016, 125-136
  • B. Heydari, M. Mosleh, K. Dalili, From Modular to Distributed Open Architectures: A United Decision Framework, Systems Engineering, 19(3), 2016, 252-266
  • M. Mosleh, P. Ludlow, B. Heydari, Distributed Resource Management in Systems of Systems: An Architecture Perspective, Systems Engineering, 2016, 19(4), 362-374O
  • D.A. Gianetto, B. Heydari, Sparse Cliques Trump Scale-Free Networks in Coordination and Competition, Scientific Reports, 6, 2016

Faculty

Aug 21, 2024

$1M NSF Award for Modeling Group Behavior To Fight Epidemics

MIE Associate Professor Babak Heydari, in collaboration with CSSH Professor Dan O’Brien (Public Policy), COS Associate Professor Gabor Lippner (Math), and CSSH Professor Silvia Prina (Economics), was awarded a $1 million NSF grant for “No One Lives in a Bubble: Incorporating Group Dynamics Into Epidemic Models,” to build computational models for group behaviors.

Faculty

Aug 20, 2024

Exploring the Strategic Behavior of Large Language Models

MIE Associate Professor Babak Heydari’s research on “Strategic Behavior of Large Language Models and the Role of Game Structure Versus Contextual Framing” was published in Scientific Reports.

Faculty

Sep 23, 2022

Do Micro-Level Social Interaction Parameters Effect Pandemic Policy Success?

MIE Associate Professor Babak Heydari’s research on “Micro-level Social Structures and the Success of COVID-19 National Policies” was published in the Nature Computational Science journal.

Faculty

Apr 15, 2022

Faculty and Staff Awards 2022

Congratulations to all the winners of the faculty and staff awards, and to everyone for their hard work and dedication during the 2021-2022 academic school year.

Faculty

Apr 16, 2020

Social distancing is controlling Covid-19; now scientists need to figure out which measures are most effective

MIE Associate Professor Babak Heydari was featured in the Stat News article “Social distancing is controlling Covid-19; now scientists need to figure out which measures are most effective“

people walking and riding bike on walkway with please social distance digital sign

Faculty

Apr 15, 2020

Determining Which Social Distancing Policies are Effective

MIE Associate Professor Babak Heydari is analyzing COVID-19 data to see which social distancing policies are the most effective.

Faculty

Jun 19, 2019

Heydari Receives NSF CAREER Award

MIE Associate Professor Babak Heydari was awarded a $490K NSF CAREER grant for “Architecting Products to Balance Innovation and Competition in Business Ecosystems”.

Faculty

Apr 09, 2019

FY20 TIER 1 Award Recipients

25 COE faculty and affiliates were recipients of FY20 TIER 1 Interdisciplinary Research Seed Grants for 18 different projects representing up to $900K dollars of investment in research.

Faculty

Oct 04, 2018

Heydari Voted as CESUN Chair-Elect

MIE Associate Professor Babak Heydari was voted as chair-elect of the executive committee for the Council of Engineering Systems Universities (CESUN), with the anticipation of assuming the chair position in 2020.

Faculty

Aug 30, 2018

New Faculty Spotlight: Babak Heydari

Babak Heydari joins the Mechanical & Industrial Engineering department in August 2018 as an Associate Professor.

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