AI@CBS Faculty

Stephan Meier is currently the chair of the Management Division and the James P. Gorman Professor of Business at Columbia Business School. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Zurich, was previously a senior economist at the Center for Behavioral Economics and Decision-Making at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and taught courses on strategic interactions and economic policy at Harvard University and the University of Zurich. His research interest is in behavioral strategy.

Kamel Jedidi is the Jerome A. Chazen Professor of Global Business at Columbia Business School, New York.  He holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics from University of Tunis and Master and Ph.D. degrees in Marketing and Statistics from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.  Dr. Jedidi has extensively published in leading marketing and statistical journals.  His research interests include pricing, product positioning, and market segmentation.

Ezra Mehlman is a managing partner at Health Enteprise Partners, a healthcare IT and services focused growth equity firm whose investors include some of the leading hospital systems and health plans across the country.  

Professor Netzer's expertise centers on one of the major business challenges of the data-rich environment: developing quantitative methods that leverage data to gain a deeper understanding of customer behavior and guide firms' decisions. He focuses primarily on building statistical and econometric models to measure consumer preferences and understand how customer choices change over time, and across contexts. Most notably, he has developed a framework for managing firms' customer bases through dynamic segmentation.

Santiago R. Balseiro is an Associate Professor of Business at the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University. He is the Research Director of the Deming Center and a part-time research scientist at Google Research. He teaches the core MBA classes Business Analytics and Operations Management, and the core Ph.D. class Foundations of Optimization.

Sharad Devarajan is a media entrepreneur, producer and creator. His most recent company, Graphic India, is the culmination of his lifelong dream to launch superheroes and genre stories that tap into the unique creativity and culture of India but appeal to audiences worldwide.

Yuval Ariav is a founder and an investor who specializes in Fintech and AI with over 20 years of experience operating large, complex, cross-geo operations in both startup and corporate environments. As the Founder and Managing Partner of Symbol, a leading Israeli first-check VC, he is the first investor in several breakout companies in the areas of financial technology, AI, and Deep Tech.  Yuval is also the Founder of Fundbox, one of the fastest-growing Fintech startups to emerge in recent years, and was its founding CTO and the head of its operations office in Tel Aviv.

Professor Kim studies status competition in market and non-market (i.e., government and regulatory) settings. One stream of research investigates how status influences the strategic outcomes for life sciences and healthcare firms, from alliance formation to FDA approval speed for new drugs. Another stream focuses on how status considerations bias the decision-making process of individuals and organizations in a wide range of contexts, including executive compensation, baseball umpiring, and patient treatment at large hospitals.

Nataliya Langburd Wright is an Assistant Professor in the strategy area and Chazen Senior Scholar at Columbia Business School. Her research focuses on entrepreneurial strategy, particularly the role of strategic technological and market choices in global entrepreneurial scaling disparities. It is published in the Strategic Management Journal and Research Policy and earned awards from the Academy of Management, PTC, the Columbia Business School Digital Future Initiative, and the Strategic Management Society.

Professor Broadie currently teaches the elective courses Security Pricing: Models and Computation, Computational Finance, and Programming for Business Research. He is an Academic Advisory Board Member for the Program for Financial Studies. His research interests include the pricing of derivative securities, risk management and, more generally, quantitative methods for decision-making under uncertainty.

Professor Chan teaches the MBA core Operations Management course and the MBA electives, The US Healthcare System: Structures and Strategies; Healthcare Management, Design, and Strategy; and The Analytics Advantage. Her research is in the area of healthcare operations management. Her primary focus is in data-driven modeling of healthcare systems. Her research combines empirical and mathematical modeling to develop evidence-based approaches to improve patient flow.

Melanie Brucks is interested in creativity and innovation. Her research focuses on the processes involved in generating and selecting innovative ideas and on the cognitive and behavioral consequences of technological innovations. Her findings help marketers better design ideation activities to maximize productivity and fuel innovation.

Before joining Columbia, Melanie Brucks received a PhD in Marketing from Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Professor Glasserman's research and teaching address risk management, quant finance, Monte Carlo simulation, statistics and operations. Prior to joining Columbia, Glasserman was with Bell Laboratories; he has also held visiting positions at Princeton University, NYU, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In 2011-2012, he was on leave from Columbia and working at the Office of Financial Research in the U.S. Treasury Department, where he continues to serve as a part-time consultant.

Daniel Guetta is Associate Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia Business School. His research focuses on the ways companies can harness the power of data and analytics to drive value. He teaches classes in business analytics, including data science, pricing, supply chain management, and technical tools such as python and cloud computing. He has authored award-winning case studies in the area with a number of companies, and co-authored "Python for MBAs".

Hannah Li is an Assistant Professor in the Decision, Risk, and Operations division at Columbia Business School. Her research focuses on developing data science methods for social systems--marketplaces, education systems, and online platforms. Her research combines techniques from operations research, statistics, and economics to develop theoretical insights for practically motivated problems. She informs her work with industry experience, working for and collaborating with large online platforms.

Hardeep Johar received an M.A. in Economics from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science and is a Fellow of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. He received a Ph.D. in Information Systems from the Stern School of Business, New York University in 1994. Prior to joining Columbia, Johar has worked as a quantitative trader at Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank, at a tech startup (MSpoke), and has taught at NYU Stern School of Business and the Gabelli School of Business Fordham University.

Costis Maglaras is the 16th Dean of Columbia Business School, and the David and Lyn Silfen Professor of Business at Columbia University. Costis received his BS in Electrical Engineering from Imperial College, London, in 1990, and his MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1991 and 1998, respectively. He joined Columbia Business School in 1998, when he joined the Decision, Risk and Operations Division.

Michael Morris is the Chavkin-Chang Professor of Leadership at CBS and also serves as Professor in the Psychology Department of Columbia University.

Matthew Dell Orfano is a Senior member at Discovery Capital, focusing globally on multiple sectors, thematic trade construction, and special situations, in addition to managing their data efforts.  He is responsible for individual positions and the internal thematically driven portfolio, which assimilates bottoms-up analysis and macro thematic from over 55 countries into actionable insights.

Edward Li is Adjunct Associate Professor at CBS. He teaches the MBA courses -- Core Financial Accounting and Financial Statement Analysis and Valuation. 

Harry Mamaysky is a Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia Business School, where he serves as the Director of the Program for Financial Studies.  He is also on the Steering Committee of the Columbia-IBM Center for Blockchain and Technology. Harry teaches capital markets and asset pricing to MBA, Masters and PhD students, as well as Executive Education courses on the use of text data in finance, and on corporate bonds.  He has consulted for a quantitative investment firm and for a nationally recognized statistical rating organization.

Andrey Simonov is the Gary Winnick and Martin Granoff Associate Professor of Business at Columbia Business School. His research covers various topics related to the marketing and economics of media products, such as measuring advertising effectiveness, media persuasion, product design, and competition in media and digital product markets.

Hongseok Namkoong is an Assistant Professor in the Decision, Risk, and Operations division at Columbia Business School. His research and teaching interests lie at the interface of operations research, machine learning, and statistics. In particular, his research develops reliable machine learning methods for decision-making problems.

Malek Ben Sliman is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Business at Columbia Business School in the Marketing Department. Malek’s research interests lie in the application of machine learning, computer vision and NLP tools in the context of art valuation, social networks, marketing analytics and online retailing. As a practitioner, he had previously worked at Sotheby’s where he built models to track the evolution of artists’ prestige over time and to automatically predict the price of art during auctions.

Professor Alex F. Mills is an expert in operations management and business analytics. His research focuses on the service sector, with a particular emphasis on healthcare. He has published in Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, and other top business journals. Professor Mills is a member of the full-time faculty at Baruch College, and a member of the doctoral faculty at the Graduate Center, both in the City University of New York. He earned his PhD in Statistics and Operations Research from the University of North Carolina.

Shiva Rajgopal is the Roy Bernard Kester and T.W. Byrnes Professor of Accounting and Auditing at Columbia Business School. He has also been a faculty member at the Duke University, Emory University and the University of Washington. Professor Rajgopal’s research interests span financial reporting, earnings quality, fraud, executive compensation and corporate culture.  His research is frequently cited in the popular press, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Bloomberg, Fortune, Forbes, Financial Times, Business Week, and the Economist.

Olivier Toubia is the Glaubinger Professor of Business at Columbia Business School. His research focuses primarily on innovation, customer insights, and creative industries. Specifically, he combines methods from social sciences and data science in order to study human processes such as motivation, choice, and creativity.  He previously served as the Editor-in-Chief at the journal Marketing Science. He teaches Foundations of Innovation, Generative AI for Business and the core marketing course. He received his MS in Operations Research and PhD in Marketing from MIT.

Jared has led some of the world’s most innovative organizations. Currently, he is chief strategy officer of Snap, the parent company of Snapchat. He serves on the board of directors of SoulCycle. He is an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School and a member of the University of Chicago Law School Advisory Council.

Farah is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Business at Columbia Business School. She teaches an a Product Management course with a focus on AI and Data products. Farah is also a founder at Dioptra, a legal tech startup backed by YCombinator.

Before that, she held different ML and PM roles at Spotify, Argo, and ZS Associates. She received her MS in Operations Research from Columbia Engineering School and another MS in Engineering from Centrale Nantes.

Will Ma is the Roderick H. Cushman Associate Professor of Business at the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University. His research centers around online algorithms in e-commerce systems, both for supply-side problems like inventory and fulfillment, and revenue management problems like dynamic assortment optimization. He specializes in designing simple online algorithms with performance guarantees, that can be tuned to historical data. Will also has miscellaneous experience as a professional poker player, video-game startup founder, and karaoke bar pianist.

Dan joined the Decision, Risk, and Operations division of the Columbia Business School in Summer 2017. He teaches a core MBA course on statistics and a PhD course on dynamic optimization. His research lies at the intersection of statistical machine learning and online decision making, mostly falling under the broad umbrella of reinforcement learning. Outside academia, he works with Spotify to apply reinforcement learning style models to audio recommendations.

Sheena S. Iyengar is the inaugural S.T. Lee Professor of Business in the Management Division at Columbia Business School, and a world expert on choice and decision-making. Her book The Art of Choosing received the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year 2010 award, and was ranked #3 on the Amazon.com Best Business and Investing Books of 2010. Her research is regularly cited in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Economist as well as in popular books, such as Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink and Aziz Ansari’s Modern Romance.

Dan Wang is Lambert Family Professor of Social Enterprise and (by courtesy) Sociology at Columbia Business School, where he is also the Co-Director of the Tamer Institute for Social Enterprise and Climate Change.  His research examines how social networks drive social and economic transformation through the analysis of global migration, social movements, organizational innovation, and entrepreneurship.

Omar Besbes's primary research interests are in the area of data-driven decision-making with a focus on applications in e-commerce, pricing and revenue management, online advertising, operations management and general service systems. His research has been recognized by multiple prizes, including the 2019 Frederick W. Lanchester Prize, the 2017 M&SOM society Young Scholar Prize, the 2013 M&SOM best paper award and the 2012 INFORMS Revenue Management and Pricing Section prize. He serves on the editorial boards of Management Science and Operations Research.

Mattan Griffel is a recipient of the Dean's Award for Teaching Excellence. Mattan is a two-time Y Combinator-backed entrepreneur and the Co-Founder of Ophelia, a company that helps people quit opioids without having to go to rehab.

Jing Dong is the DeRosa Family Associate Professor in the Decision, Risk, and Operations division at the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University. Her primary research interests are in applied probability and stochastic simulation, with an emphasis on applications in service operations management. Her current research focuses on developing data-driven stochastic modeling to improve patient flow in hospitals.

Lisa Yao Liu joined Columbia University in 2020. Her research interests include financial reporting regulations and information technologies, with a particular focus on auditing and ESG/stakeholder-related matters. Professor Liu uses different research methods including empirical archival methods, structural estimation, and field survey and interviews. Her research has been presented at leading conferences and published in the Journal of Accounting and Economics and the Journal of Accounting Research.

Ashli Carter is a Lecturer in the Management Division at Columbia Business School. Currently, she teaches topics in leadership, negotiations, and cultivating a growth mindset in the MBA and Executive Education programs, as well as for CBS administrators and staff. Prior to joining CBS faculty, she taught MBA and undergraduate courses in leadership and professional ethics at NYU Stern where she was an Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow of Management and Organizations.

Robert J. Morais is an anthropologist with a career in advertising and market research, and a Lecturer at Columbia Business School. He has taught in the full time MBA, EMBA, and Entrepreneurship and Competitiveness in Latin America, Africa, and America programs. Morais was a Principal/Co-owner of a market research firm for 11 years, preceded by 25 years with advertising agencies rising to Chief Strategic Officer.

Kinshuk Jerath is the Arthur F. Burns Chair of Free and Competitive Enterprise, Professor of Business in the Marketing division at Columbia Business School. He is also the Chair of the Marketing Division. His research is in technology-enabled marketing, primarily in online advertising, online and offline retailing, sales force management and customer management. His research has appeared in top-tier marketing and operations management journals, such as Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing Research, Management Science and Operations Research.

With nearly 90 academic publications, over 50 students, half a dozen patents, and nearly 10 million online followers, Moran Cerf is one of the leaders in the research and applications of neuroscience in business.

Cerf holds a PhD in neuroscience (Caltech), an MA in Philosophy, and a BSc in Physics (Tel-Aviv University. He has taught leadership and marketing at NYU and the Kellogg School of Management, where he was a professor of neuroscience and business for nearly a decade.

Bruce Usher is a Professor of Professional Practice and the Elizabeth B. Strickler '86 and Mark T. Gallogly '86 Faculty Director of the Tamer Institute for Social Enterprise and Climate Change at Columbia Business School. The Tamer Institute educates on the use business knowledge, entrepreneurial skills, and management tools to address social and environmental challenges. Professor Usher teaches courses on climate change, finance and business, and is a recipient of the Singhvi Prize for Scholarship in the Classroom, the Lear Award, and the Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence.

Tianyi Peng is an Assistant Professor in the Decision, Risk, and Operations division at Columbia Business School. He is broadly interested in AI for decision-making, with a focus on enhancing real-world systems using techniques like generative AI models, reinforcement learning, and experimentation/simulation methods. He is a founding member of Cimulate.AI, a startup that deploys generative AI for e-commerce. His research has received multiple prizes, including the Daniel H.

Hortense Fong uses machine learning, econometric, and experimental methods to study how emotions impact consumer behavior. A distinguishing feature of her interests involves going beyond ML’s use in prediction to study how to incorporate domain-specific theoretic and managerial knowledge into ML systems and make them more interpretable. She also has a broader interest in questions at the interface of marketing and society (e.g., fairness).
 

Ciamac C. Moallemi is the William von Mueffling Professor of Business in the Decision, Risk, and Operations Division of the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University, where he has been since 2007. He also develops quantitative trading strategies at Bourbaki LLC, a quantitative investment advisor. A high school dropout, he received S.B. degrees in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and in Mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1996).

Sandra Matz takes a Big Data approach to studying human behavior in a variety of business-related domains. She combines methodologies from psychology and computer science – including machine learning, experimental designs, online surveys, and field studies – to explore the relationships between people’s psychological characteristics (e.g. their personality) and the digital footprints they leave with every step they take in the digital environment (e.g. their Facebook Likes or their credit card transactions).