Forty Under 40: Milan Milatovic

Milan Milatovic, 32, was born and raised in the former Yugoslavia. After studying French in school, he moved to the United States in 1987 with a vocabulary of about 200 English words.

But that didn’t slow him down.

After returning to his homeland for mandatory military service, Milatovic came back to the United States in 1990 to begin college at the the University of Oklahoma in Norman. He earned three degrees there: a bachelor’s in electrical engineering in 1994, a master’s in industrial engineering in 1996 and a Ph.D. in industrial engineering in 2000. He taught at OU from 1996-2001. He also won numerous awards and had a 4.0 grade point average for his post-graduate work.

Milatovic has served as an R&D scientist for Mercari Technologies Inc. since March 2000. He works with technology integration at the software company, developing math models that other researchers use to develop the software.

Since January, Milatovic has also served as an assistant research professor at the University of Arkansas’ Walton College of Business. He teaches a graduate course called “Logistics Modeling,” which involves transportation and inventory strategies, facility location and network planning processes, customer service and order processing.