Senior Spotlight: Bayzhan Mukatay on kidney matching, community

By Emily Nguyen     2/25/25 11:37pm

Whether it’s organ donation, neural connections or Rice’s exam scheduling, where most see a problem, Bayzhan Mukatay sees a solution. At least, using math, he sees a way to try. 

Mukatay, an international student from Kazakhstan, founded the first Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences chapter at Rice, a career development organization for Operations Research students. 

As an operations research major in the department of computational applied mathematics & operations research, last year, he won the CMOR-Chevron prize for his contributions to Rice’s applied mathematics community.

---

---

Mukatay’s path to Rice began in his home country of Kazakhstan, where he attended the National School of Physics and Math. Since eighth grade, Mukatay said he was inspired by his classmates to seek out educational opportunities beyond Kazakhstan. 

“I saw upperclassmen in my high school applying abroad, and they would come back every winter break to visit school,” said Mukatay, a Wiess College senior. “I thought, ‘One day, I wish I’ll be able to do that as well.’” 

Mukatay took a gap year during the COVID-19 pandemic to focus on applying to schools. More than 30 applications later, he was ultimately accepted by Rice, which luckily, he said, was his top choice. 

Mukatay first set foot in Houston to participate in the United Space School program at NASA’s Johnson Center the summer after graduating high school. He met one-on-one with astronauts and aerospace engineers, some of whom were Rice alumni.

“I was really lucky to … represent Kazakhstan in that program,” Mukatay said. “We had a lot of talks with some astronauts, people who work at NASA, at all the space companies … That’s when I learned about Rice.”

That fall, Mukatay arrived at Rice with one backpack and a medium-sized suitcase. 

“When people started arriving, I saw them having hundreds of boxes and stuff moving in, coming with trucks or something,” Mukatay said. “I was thinking, ‘Did I forget something from home?’”

When he got to Rice, Mukatay began working with students and professors to conduct research and founded the INFORMS chapter, which won last year’s national chapter award. 

Andrew Schaefer, the Noah Harding chair for the CMOR department, worked with Mukatay when he founded the club.

“He just seemed incredibly energetic and had a vision for what he wanted to do,” Schaefer said. “[He was] excited about trying to create a community in terms of operations research students, and that’s what he ended up doing.” 

Mukatay said he was initially drawn to the problem-solving aspect of physics. Seeking a more applied field with immediate, tangible results, he chose to pursue operations research at Rice.

His desire to apply his knowledge in real-world settings led him to found INFORMS at Rice, providing a platform for students to apply their skills to solve tangible problems, Mukatay said.

“It would have been easy for him to come in and say, ‘This is going to be limited only to people … who’ve taken this certain class, or limited only to majors or in operations research’ or something like that, but he’s been very inclusive, and to the club’s benefit,” Schaefer said. 

Gavin Daves, a member of INFORMS, said that Mukatay created an inclusive and welcoming environment.

“He really took me under his help and tried to give me opportunities to be able to help out. He was collaborative with our ideas,” said Daves, a Duncan College junior. “Despite his busy schedule, he did his best and made sure that we were all accommodated and got the club on its right foot.” 

Outside of INFORMS, Mukatay researched  OR applications for healthcare with Sebastian Perez Salazar, assistant professor of CMOR and Suleyman Kerimov, assistant professor of operations management.

“[He] first sent me an email. He wanted to discuss possible research opportunities to work with me,” Kerimov said. 

Kerimov’s research at the time centered around matching kidney donors to recipients in different locations.

“We were thinking about, ‘What if there were two locations [with donors and recipients].’ Is there a way to merge these two locations so that both locations are better off?” Kerimov continued. “So, his practicality was coming from translating the theory to possible applications and practice.”

This experience led him to work on organ allocation research using matching algorithms to perform kidney transplants with the New York University Langone Center for Surgical & Transplant Applied Research.  

As Mukatay prepares for graduation and applies to graduate schools, he reflects on the connections he made at Rice. His Kazakh heritage allowed him to make a lot of connections with people from Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan and others, he said.

He also said that his Muslim identity has helped him connect with students from Bangladesh, Egypt, Tunisia and more.

“It was really wholesome to connect with all these groups and to learn about them. We had so many historical, philosophical, political talks that would go till 4 a.m. and to just share our views and opinions,” Mukatay said. “Overall, just the people at Rice are the best — very, very smart, very curious, very humble … I guess that’s the greatest part of Rice.”

---