Dr. Ali Abbas is professor of industrial and systems engineering at the University of Southern California. He is author, coauthor, and editor of numerous books including (i) Foundations of Decision Analysis, with Ronald A. Howard, (ii) Foundations of Multiattribute Utility, (iii) Next Generation Ethics, and (iv) Ethical Decision Quality: Building an Ethical Decision Culture. He also served as the Director of the Neely Center for Ethical Leadership and Decision-Making, and the Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Threats and Emergencies (CREATE).

He received the Decision Analysis Society Best Paper Award in 2011, the IEEE Systems Council Best Publication Award in 2019, and the Clemen-Kleinmuntz Best publication award in Decision Analysis in 2026. He has been involved in numerous high-stakes decisions including the analysis of TSA-Pre decisions with the Chief Risk Officer of the TSA. 

Dr. Abbas regularly teaches courses on decision analysis and has taught numerous executive education courses at a variety of institutions, such as Stanford University, BP, Southern California Edison, the Department of Homeland Security, and numerous other institutions. In addition to his academic career, Dr. Abbas is recipient of the first cohort of NSF I-Corps award where he founded Ahoona, a decision making social network that has several thousand users around the world.