Ali E. Abbas, Ph.D.

Expert on Decision and Risk Analysis, Author, and Professor of Engineering

"The earlier you learn decision skills, the more impact the learning will have on your life and the easier it will be for good decision skills to become second nature. I have been passionate about spreading decision skills to youth for a very long time."

Affiliations: 

  • USC Viterbi School of Engineering and the USC Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California: Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering, and Public Policy
  • The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Former Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering
  • Ahoona Corp: Founder, President, CEO
  • Operations Research, Decision Analysis, Decision, and Entropy Journals: Editorial Board Member

Awards: 

  • Multiple awards from the National Science Foundation, including:
    • CAREER Award
    • Innovation Corps awards
    • Early-concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER)
  • 2026 Frank P. Ramsey Medal, the highest honor awarded by the Decision Analysis Society of INFORMS

Publications: 

  • Foundations of Decision Analysis, Co-Authored with Ronald A. Howard
  • Improving Homeland Security Decisions, Co-Authored with Milind Tambe and Detlof von Winterfeldt
  • Foundations of Multiattribute Utility
  • Next-Generation Ethics: Engineering a Better Society
  • Widely published in journals and conference publications

Education: 

  • Stanford University, Ph.D., Ph.D. minor, and Master’s Degrees

Ali E. Abbas is committed to sharing his expertise in decision-making with others.  

Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering and Public Policy at the University of Southern California, Ali has written several books, including Foundations of Decision Analysis, co-authored with Ronald A. Howard.  

Ali has received multiple awards from the National Science Foundation for his work on decision analysis, risk analysis, multi-attribute utility theory, and data-based decision-making. In 2026, Ali received the 2026 Frank P. Ramsey Medal, the highest honor awarded by the Decision Analysis Society of INFORMS. This prestigious recognition celebrates his decades of pioneering contributions to decision analysis, including influential work in utility theory, decision-making under uncertainty, and engineering systems. 

Additionally, he has served on several advisory boards, including the Decision Education Foundation, where he taught decision skills to at-risk youth at juvenile detention centers. He also founded the decision-making social network Ahoona Corp., which spreads decision-making tools around the world and has several thousand users.