Opher BaronProfile page
Professor
Joseph L. Rotman School of Management
BIO
Opher Baron is a University of Toronto Distinguished Professor of Operations Management at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto and a cofounder and CEO of SiMLQ. He was a visiting associate Professor at the Industrial engineering and Management faculty of Technion (2009/10) and a visiting Professor at the School of Information Management and Engineering, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics (2016/17). He is a Distinguished Fellow at the School of Business Administration at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2025/26). Opher served as the Academic Director, MMA Program (2021/23), and the Operations management and statistics area coordinator (2015/21). He has a PhD in Operations Management from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an MBA and BSc in Industrial Engineering and Management from the Technion. On the teaching front, Opher is especially proud of the modeling and analytics courses he introduced and teaches at Rotman. On the application front he and his colleagues launched the Covidppehelp.ca platform that facilitated the flow of millions of PPE items to end-user customers during the global Covid19 pandemic. In 2024 he cofounded SiMLQ Inc. see WWW.SiMLQ.com. SiMLQ automatically constructs data-driven process Simulators (digital twins) by leveraging event log data, Machine Learning and Queueing theory. On the theory side, Opher’s research interests include queueing, business analytics, service operations (such as healthcare), autonomous vehicles, and supply chain management. Opher's work is published in leading journals such as Operations Research, and Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, and he has won several research and teaching awards and grants, including the 1000 Talents Plan Scholar from the Shanghai Municipal Government, 2017, the Rotman 2023 Distinguished Scholarly Contribution Award, and the Rotman 2025/6 Excellence in Doctoral Mentorship Award. Opher is active in the operations research and operations management community. He has given numerous invited keynote lectures and seminars, chaired several conferences, clusters, and sessions, and is currently serving on the advisory board and editorial boards of several leading journals, including Operations Research, and Manufacturing & Service Operations Management.
MEDIA
ACADEMIC POSITIONS
- Academic Director, Master of Management AnalyticsUniversity of Toronto, Rotman School of Management, Toronto, Canada2021 - 2023
- University of Toronto Distinguished Professor of Operations ManagementUniversity of Toronto, Rotman School of Management, Toronto, Canada2019 - present
- Area Coordinator, Operations Management and Statistics,University of Toronto, Rotman School of Management, Toronto, Canada2015 - 2021
- Full ProfessorUniversity of Toronto, Rotman School of Management, Toronto, Canada2014 - present
- Assistant ProfessorUniversity of Toronto, Rotman School of Management, Toronto, Canada2003 - 2009
- Visiting Associate ProfessorTechnion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel2009 - 2010
- Associate ProfessorUniversity of Toronto, Rotman School of Management, Toronto, Canada2009 - 2014
- Visiting ProfessorShanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai, China2016 - 2017
NON-ACADEMIC POSITIONS
- Masters Programs CommitteeUniversity of Toronto, Rotman School of Management, Toronto, Canada2010 - 2015
DEGREES
- BScTechnion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel
- MBATechnion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel
- PhDMassachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States
LANGUAGES
- English
- Hebrew
AVAILABILITY
- Industry Projects
- Media enquiries