Dr. Fatih Nayebi

Dr. Fatih Nayebi is an Assistant Professor in Information Systems at the Desautels Faculty of Management and the Founder & CEO of OODARIS AI. His work turns machine-learning research into AI systems that organizations can run in production, and he teaches the analysts and engineers who will build and lead them.

Academic Background

Dr. Nayebi earned his Ph.D. in Engineering at École de technologie supérieure, where his research combined software engineering, human-computer interaction and machine learning, and he went on to complete a postdoctoral fellowship in machine learning. He holds an M.Sc. in Software Engineering and a B.Sc. in Computer Engineering from Boğaziçi University.

Industry Leadership

At OODARIS AI, Dr. Nayebi builds agentic AI systems for retail planning, merchandising, supply-chain operations and customer experience. Before founding the company, he was Vice President of Data & AI at the ALDO Group, where he and his team put the global retailer's data and AI strategy into practice. Work he led there received CIO Awards and grants from Scale AI, Canada's AI Global Innovation Cluster. He shipped his first production AI product in 2008.

Teaching & Mentoring

Since 2019, Dr. Nayebi has designed and taught McGill graduate courses in enterprise data science, machine learning in production, deep learning, and agentic AI systems. His courses are built around hands-on projects and real deployment practice. As Industry Liaison and Advisor for the Master of Management in Analytics, he supervises capstone projects and connects students with industry partners. Since 2023 he has organized the Retail Gen AI Hackathon with the Bensadoun School of Retail Management.

Books & Publications

Dr. Nayebi is the author of Foundations of Agentic AI for Retail: Designing, Building, and Operating Retail AI Agents, from First Principles to Production (Gradient Divergence; first edition 2025, third edition October 2026). The book asks when a retailer should hand a decision to software, and what evidence and controls make that handover worthwhile. In October 2026 he also published Foundations of Agentic AI Systems, in two volumes: Models, Learning, and Decisions, from First Principles (Volume I) and Agents, Operations, and Governance, in Production (Volume II). He previously wrote Swift Functional Programming (Packt, first and second editions). His academic articles span neural-network architectures, software-product evolution and mobile HCI, and are indexed on Google Scholar.

Recognition & Service

RETHINK Retail has named Dr. Nayebi a Top Retailer and a Top AI Leader, and he was a finalist for Retail Partner: Person of the Year in the Vendors in Partnership 2026 Retail Partnership Awards. He served on the judging panel for the 2025 Newsweek AI Impact Awards. He speaks regularly on agentic AI, responsible AI adoption and AI in retail, at events including Shoptalk, NRF Nexus, ODSC West, World Summit AI Americas and the Big Data & Analytics Summits.