Omar Ben-Ayed is Professor of Management at the Department of Management and Marketing at the College of Business and Economics at Qatar University. He is also Qatar Rail Chair in Business Excellence. He received his PhD in Business Administration (1988) and his MS in Applied Mathematics (1985) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in USA.  He is tri-lingual (Arabic, English and French) with varied academic and non-academic work experience in United States, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Qatar. His teaching interests are related to the subjects of Management Science, Operations Management, Business Statistics and Quality Management. His research interests are mainly in the areas of bi-level linear programming, freight transportation network design and scheduling, in addition to the applications of quality management to higher education.