
Doctor of Philosophy in Mechanical Engineering (December 2016), Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA (GPA: 4.00/4)
Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering-Applied Design (September 2009), University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering-Solid Mechanics (September 2006), University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
Ali Ahrari received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Tehran in 2006 and 2009, respectively. He received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Michigan State University (MSU) in 2016 and subsequently worked as a research associate at MSU until June 2018. He has won some international competitions on optimization such as "Competition on niching methods for multimodal optimization" in 2016 and 2020, which was held at CEC and GECCO conferences, as well as international student competition on structural optimization (ISCSO) in 2017 and 2018 and received a 1000 euro cash prizes. Since July 2018, he is working at UNSW-Canberra as a research associate in the Canberra Evolutionary Optimization group. His current research concentrates on evolutionary dynamic and noisy optimization with a focus on multimodal and multiobjective problems.
$3718 from the UNSW high-performance computing (HPC) resource allocation scheme
2020 Winner of competition on niching methods for multimodal optimisation at IEEE WCCI/CEC'2020 (500 USD cash prize from IEEE) and GECCO'2020
2018 Winner of 2018 ISCSO competition on structural optimisation (1000 € prize)
2017 Winner of GECCO'2017 competition on multi-modal optimisation
2017 Winner of the 2017 ISCSO competition on structural optimisation among 60+ participants (1000 € prize)
2016 Winner of GECCO'2016, CEC'2016 competitions on multimodal optimisation
2016 Passed the FE/EIT mechanical engineering exam in the state of Michigan, USA
2013-2016 Graduate Office Fellowship (This fellowship was awarded multiple times)
2012 Richard H. Brown – ME Endowment Award
I carry out research on developing optimization algorithms, both classical methods and evolutionary algorithms, and their specialization for engineering problems. Engineering Design by optimization is my favorite subject. I have also some experience in machine learning, specifically Decision trees and neural networks. Currently, I am doing research on “Reactive planning under disruptions and dynamic changes”, which is funded by the Australian Research Council. In the past, I have worked on evolutionary optimization-related projects funded by General Motors Company, Ford Motor Company, REWIND, NSF, and a few other projects that were not funded.
We may have a funded position for a graduate student (PhD or Master’s by research). If you have a background, expertise, and interest in design optimisation, evolutionary algorithms, or even machine learning, feel free to email me with the following information:
My Research Supervision
1 PhD student at SEIT, UNSW-Canberra