Penn State Great Valley hires faculty member

Ashkan Negahban, assistant professor of engineering management, has joined Penn State Great Valley from Auburn University, where he taught undergraduate and graduate courses in simulation modeling and probability and statistics.

Born and raised in Iran, Negahban wanted to study engineering from a young age. Each of his degrees are in industrial and systems engineering — he received a bachelor of science from the University of Tehran and a master of engineering and a doctorate from Auburn University.

He also developed an eight-part video learning series on simulation software. Originally created to replace a weekly lab component for an undergraduate class, the videos have been viewed more than 40,000 times and are used by faculty from institutions around the world.

This fall he will teach an online economics course for engineering students and an on-campus capstone course in engineering management. In preparation for the capstone course, Negahban has connected with local companies with whom students will collaborate and create projects.

His research interests include the use of Monte Carlo, discrete event, and agent-based simulation in manufacturing system design. He has authored several journal articles and research papers and is the 2014 recipient of the Special Interest Group on Simulation and Modeling Award from the Association for Computing Machinery.