Mehrdad is a Senior Lecturer in Business Analytics at the Faculty of Business and Law, University of Wollongong (UOW). His primary research focus is the design and analysis of metaheuristic analytics methods, along with their application in operations research, supply chains, network design, and social media. His research on these methods has already been published in several highly reputed journals such as Annals of Operations Research, Expert Systems with Applications, Applied Intelligence, Evolutionary Computation (MIT Press), IEEE Sensors and Computers & Industrial Engineering. He has also contributed several book chapters and conference papers to well-known book series, namely Computational Intelligence Techniques for Green Smart Cities (Springer), Springer Tracts in Nature-Inspired Computing, and Handbook of Smart Cities.

Mehrdad has been successful in securing and delivering over 30 commercial research projects and grants and currently serve as Chief Investigator on two Category 1 grants funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC). These projects have involved multiple initiatives including leadership and engagement with the broader community and major technology companies such as Amazon Web Services. Within SAEF, he is currently investigating operations research and optimisation applications in biodiversity conservation planning in Antarctica.