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Raha Akhavan-Tabatabaei

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Raha Akhavan-Tabatabaei
Born1978
San Francisco, California, U.S.
🏳️ NationalityIranian
🎓 Alma materSharif University of Technology (B.Sc.)
North Carolina State University (M.Sc., Ph.D.)
💼 Occupation
Known forOperations management research, open-water swimming achievements

Raha Akhavan-Tabatabaei (born 1978) is an Iranian academic and open-water swimmer. She is a professor of operations management and business analytics at Sabancı University and is known for her research in industrial engineering and her participation in international open-water swimming events. She is the first Iranian woman to complete several notable marathon swims, including the Catalina Channel, the Strait of Gibraltar, and the 20 Bridges Swim around Manhattan.[1]

Early life and education

Akhavan-Tabatabaei was born in 1978 in San Francisco, California, U.S., and raised in Tehran, Iran.[2] She studied industrial engineering at Sharif University of Technology, graduating in 2001. She earned her M.Sc. (2005) and Ph.D. (2011) in industrial engineering and operations research from North Carolina State University, where her doctoral work focused on operations management in semiconductor manufacturing.[3]

Academic career

In 2009, Akhavan-Tabatabaei joined the Department of Industrial Engineering at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá as an assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor in 2014. She moved to Istanbul in 2016 to join the Sabancı Business School as associate professor and director of the M.Sc. in Business Analytics program. She was promoted to full professor in 2021.[4]

Her research has covered topics such as humanitarian logistics, workforce assignment, and health systems optimization, with publications in journals including Transportation Research Part C and BMC Public Health.[4]

Swimming career

Akhavan-Tabatabaei has participated in numerous open-water swimming events. She has completed:

  • 20 Bridges Swim (circumnavigation of Manhattan Island, 2023) – 8 h 31 min; first Iranian woman to finish.[5]
  • Strait of Gibraltar (2022) – first Iranian woman to cross.[2]
  • Catalina Channel (2021) – first Iranian woman to complete the solo crossing.[5]
  • English Channel 4-person relay (2019)
  • North Channel 4-person relay (2019)
  • Multiple Bosphorus Cross-Continental Swimming Races since 2017
  • Dardanelles Hellespont Swim (2022)

She has stated that several of her swims were used to raise awareness of women’s rights in Iran.[5]

Selected publications

  • Angulo, Daniela; Cortes, Maria Fernanda; Mura, Ivan; Akhavan-Tabatabaei, Raha (2023). "Fine-grained mathematical modeling for cost-effectiveness evaluation of public health policies for cervical cancer, with application to a Colombian case study". BMC Public Health. 23 (1). doi:10.1186/s12889-023-16022-x. PMC 10394806 Check |pmc= value (help). PMID 37533028 Check |pmid= value (help). Unknown parameter |article-number= ignored (help)
  • Karabulut, Ezgi; Gholizadeh, Fatemeh; Akhavan-Tabatabaei, Raha (2022). "The value of adaptive menu sizes in peer-to-peer platforms". Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies. 145. Bibcode:2022TRPC..14503948K. doi:10.1016/j.trc.2022.103948. Unknown parameter |article-number= ignored (help)

References

  1. "US-Born Iranian to Swim around Manhattan for "Brave" Women in Iran". IranWire. 2023-08-16. Retrieved 2025-08-11.
  2. 2.0 2.1 Kılıç, Kerim (2022). "Sesim ve Birliğim". Socrates Dergi (in Türkçe). Retrieved 2025-08-11.
  3. "Raha Akhavan-Tabatabaei". Sabancı University. Retrieved 2025-08-11.
  4. 4.0 4.1 Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Sabanci
  5. 5.0 5.1 5.2 Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named IranWire

External links


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