ESR8 – Rehan Iftikhar

My name is Rehan Iftikhar and I am from Pakistan. I have a diverse educational background with a Master’s in Engineering Management and a Bachelor’s in Mechatronics Engineering. I received my master’s degree from University of Exeter, UK for which I was also awarded the prestigious Commonwealth Scholarship. My bachelor’s degree is from National University of Sciences and Technology, Pakistan.

While pursuing my masters, I developed a keen interest in emerging digital technologies in addition to my ever-present aspiration of developing innovative solutions. Continuing with this interest, my master’s project involved developing a demand forecasting framework for a retail supply chain, based on predictive analytics using social media Big Data and company’s sales data. I have presented and published on various topics including retail, social media analytics, big data and digital technologies. Moreover, I have worked in different capacities professionally as well including as a Project Engineer in Pakistan, a Supply Chain Analyst in the retail sector in UK and then as a consultant back again in Pakistan.

My intellectual curiosity and passion for asking questions is what lead me to pursue this position. I have become a part of PERFROM as I believe this research has the potential to be a game changer in Digital Retail and I aspire to contribute to this change. My project at PERFORM involves integrating traditional and online retail channels, providing unified customer experience and integrated retail operation and payment systems, applying different retail technologies.