Saeed Pourmasoumi Langarudi, Postdoctoral Research Scientist, New Mexico State University

By Catherine Ortega Klett, NM WRRI Program Manager

In 2017, Dr. Saeed Langarudi arrived at New Mexico State University after receiving his PhD in system dynamics and economics from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts. His dissertation was entitled, A System Dynamics Approach to Political Economy of Resource Dependent Nations. He also has an MSc in economics from Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran, and a BSc in industrial engineering from Aza University of Najafabad.

Dr. Langarudi’s research interests include natural resources economics, socioeconomic development, political economy, behavioral decision-making, system dynamics, and dynamics of conflict and security. At NMSU, he is teaching a graduate course, System Dynamics for Understanding Economics and Natural Resource Management.

Over the past couple of years, Dr. Langarudi has worked with colleagues at the New Mexico Water Resources Research Institute on several research projects including participating on a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation grant. He is working with a team to identify and examine the significance of dynamic interactions and feedback mechanisms within and between hydrology, human decision processes, and socioeconomic systems. His research will inform natural resources managers and policy makers to design high-leverage interventions that potentially revive the balance of our socioenvironmental systems.

Dr. Langarudi is also working on a National Science Foundation INFEWS (Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water Systems) program. In this project, he is responsible for system dynamics modeling of interrelationships between hydrology and agriculture, and hydrology and energy systems. In this regard, he collaborates with a group of scholars from different disciplines including economics, animal sciences, range sciences, hydrology, and energy. Dr. Langarudi’s interdisciplinary work has appeared in prestigious journals such as Ecological Economics and Systems.

Dr. Langarudi is an active member of multiple systems sciences communities. He chairs the Security Thread of the International Conference of the System Dynamics Society. He is also a committee member in the Computational Social Science Society of the Americas as well as in the Iranian System Dynamics Society.