Our PhD Students

A Ph.D. student at Foisie Business School at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. I am a new faculty member in the College of Business Administration at Princess Nora University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Interested in Sustainable Supply Chain Management and System Dynamics.

Fadi is first year PhD student in Business- Information Technology. Fadi works with his advisor Professor Eleanor Loiacono. His research focuses on Business and Social Media Analytics.

Moayad‘s research focuses on user experience. He is interested in studying how users interact with the web and mobile applications, looking at such things as ease of use, aesthetics, perception, or efficiency.

Shiya Cao is a PhD student in information technology at Foisie Business School at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She is interested in research of technology enabled social inclusion, human-computer interaction, user experience, and gender equity in IT. 

As a Ph.D. candidate, I am passionate about developing sustainable supply chain network models that can help build and maintain a more efficient, resilient, and balanced supply chain network, all with the help of cutting-edge blockchain technology. My research is focused on exploring new dimensions of supply chain networks using game theory and variational inequalities. I apply game-theoretic models to illustrate the ecosystem of entities in a supply chain, including suppliers, consumers, and middle entities, and examine how they can adapt to new environments, survive in uncertain times, ...

Prateek Jain’s PhD research focuses on User Experience. His research interests are augmented reality, internet of things (IoT), accessibility and eye tracking. He is working on multiple research projects focusing on use of augmented reality to improve user experience of products and services. Along with that, he believes augmented reality itself needs to have a great user experience since it is changing the way we interact with the world around us. Prior to entering the PhD program, he received MS in Information Technology from WPI and BE in Electronics and Communication from Sanghvi ...

Basma Khoja has a considerable personal experience in establishing Family Business. Her experience is first drives from the fact that her family owns a Family business that started one of the most prestigious hospitals in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. In addition to being a shareholder in the business; she also sits on the board of directors of the company. This experience inspired her to pursue the principles underlying forming and operating such corporation. She later became a faculty member in the college of Business Administration at King AbdulAziz University in Jeddah Saudi Arabia. She was ...

Luis Jimenez Castillo is a PhD Student focusing on Family Business. His research interests are Internationalization, Strategy and Corporate Governance. Before pursuing his degree at WPI, Luis was a faculty member at Universidad Panamericana in Mexico where he was also a member of the Advisory Board of the Family Business Management Bachelor’s Program. As a Family Business practitioner, Luis served as the Chairman of the Board of his family’s firm. He has also consulted for other family managed companies. Luis has published articles in local business magazines in Mexico regarding succession ...

Javad Norouzi Nia’s research focuses on user experience and decision making. He uses eye tracking to gain a deeper understanding of how people process information and how they use the information to make decisions. In addition to advancing research in Neuro Information Systems (NeuroIS), his work has important implications for research in many different fields such as cognitive psychology, marketing, and education. Before entering the WPI Ph.D. program in Aug 2018, Javad received his MBA from Iowa State University. Before joining the MBA program, he worked for about six years in the ...

Yu Shi is a PhD student in operations management at the Business School. Transitioning from a finance and economics background, Yu is devoted to establishing a concentration of research on operations management, combining the knowledge she learned about the financial industry and the business field with practical applications in Operations Analytics.

I am a former Fulbright Scholar and a current international student from Pakistan, pursuing my PhD in Business Administration (concentration in Information Technology). I am currently working as a Research Assistant at the User Experience and Decision Making (UXDM) lab at WPI. I have double masters in Information Technology, and Marketing and Innovation, both from WPI. Before coming to WPI, I worked full-time as a Brand Manager at Rocket Internet SE. Prior to that, I worked as a Marketing Intern at The Coca-Cola Company in Pakistan.

Shimi Zhou is currently pursuing PhD degree in Information Technology at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Prior to entering the PhD program, she worked for Professor Eleanor T. Loiacono as a graduate assistant and received MS in Information Technology from WPI. Her research interest is about the intersection of technology and people.