Research Rock Stars: Anahita Khojandi Puts People at the Center of AI Innovation
Anahita Khojandi has built her research career around a guiding belief: Artificial intelligence should empower people—not replace them. A professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and Heath Endowed Faculty Fellow in Business and Engineering, Khojandi designs decision-making systems that operate under uncertainty and support human users in high-impact real-world environments. In settings from intensive care units to manufacturing facilities, her work connects data, operational workflows, and human judgment.
“I take a systems-view approach to modeling,” she explains. “Humans are always at the center of any model I build. My goal is to empower the person in the loop to make better, faster decisions.”
During her 11 years at UT, Khojandi has developed expertise in decision-making under uncertainty and partial information along with machine learning and reinforcement learning. Her research spans health care and genomics, environmental engineering and sustainability, intelligent transportation systems, manufacturing, and maintenance optimization.
Read more about Khojandi and her work at research.utk.edu