Professor Bahman Rostami-Tabar awarded prestigious Lyn Thomas Impact Medal 2025

Professor Bahman Rostami-Tabar from the Data Lab for Social Good Research Group at Cardiff Business School has been awarded the prestigious Lyn Thomas Impact Medal 2025 by the Operational Research Society (OR Society).

The award was presented at a ceremony held on December 2 at the Royal Society in London, recognising his outstanding and sustained contribution to operational research that has achieved demonstrable real-world impact.

The Lyn Thomas Impact Medal is awarded annually by the OR Society to celebrate academic research which best demonstrates both novelty and real-world impact, backed up by evidence. It is one of the Society’s most distinguished honours, recognising work whose benefits have been realised in practice within the past three years. Professor Rostami-Tabar’s research exemplifies this, transforming forecasting and advanced analytics from a technical discipline into a powerful instrument for equity, resilience, and sustainable development.

Professor Rostami-Tabar received the award for his pioneering initiative, Forecasting for Social Good (F4SG), which unites research, civic engagement, and public value. Since founding F4SG in 2017, he has addressed critical forecasting and operations research challenges in sectors such as global health supply chains, humanitarian logistics, and healthcare operations. His work demonstrates how data-driven forecasting can save lives by improving the availability of essential medicines and health products in low-resource settings.

Through collaborations with organisations including USAID, John Snow Inc, the Ethiopian Pharmaceutical Supply Service, and the Ministry of Health in Ethiopia, Professor Rostami-Tabar and his colleagues have developed practical tools and modelling frameworks tailored to the realities of health supply chain systems in Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, and Ethiopia. These solutions have significantly improved the reliability of forecasting processes for family planning commodities, vaccines, and essential medicines, strengthening the resilience and efficiency of public health systems.

Alongside the research, Professor Rostami-Tabar has been a leading advocate for capacity building and open access to knowledge through his Democratising Forecasting and AFRICAST programmes. These initiatives have delivered free, hands-on forecasting training to more than 1,000 learners, including academics, professionals, and students across over 20 low and lower-middle income countries. Participants from health, agriculture, humanitarian, and education sectors have been equipped with the skills to use data and analytics for public good.