About me

Nima Manaf, PhD

I build decision systems for messy, high-stakes problems.

My work sits between machine learning, optimization, finance, and operations research. I care about models that survive contact with constraints, teams, and real decisions.

Current work Data Analytics Lead

Current base Netherlands

Current team Rabobank / Value Chain Finance Portfolio

See timeline

Applied machine learning, optimization, and analytics for real decision systems.

Nima Manaf, PhD Netherlands

2022 - Present Netherlands

Rabobank

The current chapter is Rabobank, value chain finance, and research habits translated into production decisions.

The work now sits closer to decisions: portfolio monitoring, credit risk, model governance, and analytics that teams actually use.
The academic habits are still there, but the output has to survive operational, regulatory, and business constraints.

What stayed

Research moved into finance, risk, and portfolio analytics.

Current chapter

Data Analytics Lead

Rabobank / Value Chain Finance Portfolio

Rabobank office buildings on Croeselaan in Utrecht — Rabobank Headquarters / Croeselaan 18, 3521 CB Utrecht, Netherlands

2020 - 2022 Netherlands

Postdoc at TU/e

The postdoc years were a proud way to give back to academia: helping bachelor's and master's students graduate, building lasting friendships and a wider research network, and joining Ivo Adan's group, a funny coincidence because his name appeared first in the references of my PhD thesis.

Helping bachelor's and master's students graduate became one of the parts I am proudest of.
Eindhoven also built a wider academic network and friendships that stayed beyond the projects.
The coincidence still makes me smile: I joined Ivo Adan's group after seeing his name first in my PhD thesis references.

Atlas Building at Eindhoven University of Technology — TU/e Atlas Building Image: Honeywell

What stayed

A proud giving-back chapter: student graduations, friendships, and the Ivo Adan coincidence.

2020 Turkey

Final PhD stretch

I returned to Istanbul to write and defend the dissertation: Modelling and Control of Production Systems Based on Observed Inter-event Times: An Analytical and Empirical Investigation.

The return to Istanbul was about closing the loop: writing, defending, and turning years of work into a finished thesis.
The dissertation studied how observed inter-event times can be used to model and control production systems.
PhD Academic Excellence Award recipient.

Dissertation on arXiv

Koc University Rumelifeneri campus overlooking the Black Sea — Koc University, Rumelifeneri Campus Image: apply.ku.edu.tr

What stayed

Dissertation defended, PhD Academic Excellence Award, and the research bridge into applied decision systems.

2019 - 2020 Germany

Bosch Center for Artificial Intelligence

A year at Bosch AI working on scheduling, reinforcement learning, search, and industrial data.

Bosch put the research inside industrial constraints: scheduling, search, reinforcement learning, and semiconductor data.
It made the work more concrete, because the algorithms had to meet factory-scale messiness.

Bosch research campus building in Renningen — Bosch Renningen Campus Image: Wikimedia Commons

What stayed

One year inside industrial AI.

2014 - 2019 Turkey

Koc University, MSc to PhD

Istanbul became the long academic chapter: a full-scholarship MSc and then a full-scholarship PhD at Koc University.

MSc in Operations and Information Systems, 2014 - 2016, on full scholarship.
The master's work turned into a full-scholarship doctoral route through operations research, production systems, and data-driven modeling.
This is where I started treating uncertainty as something to model carefully, not smooth away.

What stayed

Full-scholarship MSc and PhD years that turned operations research into a doctoral path.

2010 - 2014 Iran

BSc at Sharif University of Technology

Tehran meant a full-scholarship BSc in Industrial Engineering at Sharif University of Technology, often described as Iran's MIT.

BSc in Industrial Engineering, 2010 - 2014, on full scholarship.
Exceptional Talent Student distinction: top 0.1% in the National University Entrance Exam.
Industrial engineering gave me the language of systems, constraints, queues, and trade-offs.

What stayed

Full-scholarship BSc at Sharif, exceptional talent distinction, and the first formal step into systems thinking.

Beginning East Azerbaijan, Iran

Origin

The starting point: Qaradag, in the Azerbaijan region of Iran.

The origin point is not a credential; it is the place that gives the route its first texture.
It keeps the story grounded before universities, labs, and companies enter the picture.

Babak Castle in the Qaradag mountains — Babak Castle, Qaradag Image: Wikimedia Commons

What stayed

Born in Qaradag, in northwestern Iran.

Current Practice

Current Work

The current chapter sits at the intersection of financial risk, optimization, machine learning, and decision systems used in practice.

Financial Risk and Portfolio Analytics

Portfolio monitoring, challenger modeling, regulation-facing analysis, and decision support for value chain finance and credit risk workflows.

Credit riskValue chain financeMonitoringModel governance

Learning and Optimization

Reinforcement learning, evolution strategies, graph-based modeling, and optimization methods for environments with delayed feedback and hard constraints.

Reinforcement learningEvolution strategiesGNNsStochastic optimization