Mana Azarm headshot

Mana Azarm

Assistant Professor

Full-Time Faculty
Malloy Hall 224
Socials

Biography

Mana Azarm is an assistant professor of analytics and information systems. She dedicated her career to the continuous development of scalable data pipelines to enable intelligent decision making. With a deep understanding of diverse data architecture paradigms, including relational databases, data warehouses and lakes, multidimensional data cubes, time series optimized data stores, and other emerging paradigms, her current research focuses on Large Language Models (LLM) in development of data pipelines.

Prior to joining USF, Mana devoted over a decade to working in industry and assuming leadership roles at multiple companies, including a Silicon Valley unicorn and a construction-tech venture she co-founded. In addition to her industry engagements, Mana has been a lecturer of Data Engineering at UC Berkeley, as well as Python programming, and Product Development and Management at the University of Ottawa. She has also provided consulting and partnership to organizations such as the Bank of Canada, the City of Ottawa, and Ontario Health.

Expertise

  • Data modeling and data architecture
  • Data analytics and information systems
  • Data warehousing and lake storage

Research Areas

  • LLMs in data pipeline development and engineering
  • Scaled data management systems
  • Database engines and analytics systems
  • Product management and development

Education

  • University of Ottawa, PhD in Electronic Business
  • University of Ottawa, MS in Systems Science
  • Alzahra University, BBA & MS in Information Technology Management

Prior Experience

  • Senior Manager of Data Analytics, DoorDash
  • Lecturer in Data Engineering, UC Berkeley
  • Co-Founder, ModuleUp
  • Part-time Professor, University of Ottawa
  • Senior Analytics Strategist, City of Ottawa

Awards & Distinctions

  • ICTC WIL Digital award (Government of Canada Information and Communication Technology Council,  Work-Integrated Learning Digital program), 2020
  • uOttawa Entrepreneurship Hub startup pre-accelerator award, 2020
  • Two-time recipient of the University of Ottawa’s Excellence Award, 2015, and 2017

Selected Publications

  • Azarm, Mana; Meehan, Rebecca; Kuziemsky, Craig; Towards a universal patient-centric health record sharing platform, Health Policy and Technology, Volume 12, Issue 4, 2023.
  • Azarm, Mana; Kuziemsky, Craig; Peyton, Liam; A Framework for System-level Health Data Sharing, HEALTHINF2020, 2020.
  • Azarm, Mana; Peyton, Liam; An ontology for a patient-centric healthcare interoperability framework,2018 IEEE/ACM International Workshop on Software Engineering in Healthcare Systems (SEHS),34-41, 2018, IEEE.
  • Azarm, Mana; Backman, Chantal; Kuziemsky, Craig; Peyton, Liam; Breaking the Healthcare Interoperability Barrier by Empowering and Engaging Actors in the Healthcare System, Procedia Computer Science, 113, 326-333, 2017, Elsevier.
  • Azarm, Mana; Kuziemsky, Craig; Peyton, Liam; A review of cross organizational healthcare data sharing, Procedia Computer Science, 63, 425-432, 2015, Elsevier.
  • Azarm, Mana; Nargesian, Fatemeh; Peyton, Liam; Tool Support and Data Management for Business Analytics Applications in Healthcare, International Journal for Infonomics (IJI), 4, 3/4, 484-493, 2011.