Faculty

I am an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and the director of the Causal Artificial Intelligence Lab at Columbia University. I obtained my Ph.D. under Judea Pearl from the University of California, Los Angeles. I am broadly interested in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Statistics, Robotics, Cognitive Science, and Philosophy of Science.

Professor Bartel is the Merrill Lynch Professor of Workforce Transformation at Columbia Business School and the Director of Columbia Business School's Workforce Transformation Initiative. She is an expert in the fields of labor economics and human resource management and has published numerous articles on employee training, human capital investments, job mobility, and the impact of technological change on productivity, worker skills, and outsourcing decisions. Bartel received the 1992 Margaret Chandler Award for Commitment to Excellence in teaching.

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.

Prof. Blei and his group develop novel models and methods for exploring, understanding, and making predictions from the massive data sets that pervade many fields. Their work is widely used in science, scholarship, and industry to solve interdisciplinary, real-world problems. In particular, they focus on a variety of applications, including language, recommendation systems, neuroscience, and the computational social sciences. Prof. Blei and his group have set new paths in the fields of machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Mathematics, and scientifically reproducible datasets, are critical not only for algorithms to improve for all, but also to guide society on the ethical and economic consequences of differentiated treatments led by automatic decisions. Chaintreau joined Columbia after five years of research in industry; since then he works only with public and non-profit funds. Scientists and engineers in industry labs are however frequent collaborators in the joint release of data, tools, or publication of results, as well as investigative journalists.

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.

Owen Davis is currently a Partner at Contour Venture Partners, a early-stage, technology focused venture capital fund based in New York City. He is the past Managing Director of NYC Seed, a seed stage venture capital fund in New York City. He also founded the NYC Seedstart accelerator and Overlap, an artificial intelligence software company for scheduling. 

Al Drewes '82 brings over 35 years of executive experience with both global public and private equity portfolio companies in the consumer products space. Most recently he was the Chief Operating Officer of the Sun Products Corporation. Sun was a portfolio company owned by the private equity sponsor, Vestar Capital Partners.

William Duggan is the author of three recent books on innovation: Strategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement (2007); Creative Strategy: A Guide for Innovation (2012); and The Seventh Sense: How Flashes of Insight Change Your Life (2015).  In 2007 the journal Strategy+Business named Strategic Intuition “Best Strategy Book of the Year.” He has BA, MA and PhD degrees from Columbia University, and twenty years of experience as a strategy advisor and consultant. 

Noémie Elhadad is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. She is affiliated with Columbia’s Department of Computer Science and the Columbia Data Science Institute.

Talia Gillis studies the law and economics of consumer markets. She is interested in household financial behavior and how consumer welfare is shaped by technological and legal changes.

Dr. Jorge Guzman is an associate professor at the Management Division in Columbia Business School. Jorge received his PhD from the Sloan School of Management  at MIT, and was previously a postdoc at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a lecturer at MIT Sloan.

Mark Hansen joined Columbia Journalism School in July 2012 and took on the position of inaugural director of the east coast branch of the Brown Institute for Media Innovation. Prior to joining Columbia, he was a professor at UCLA, holding appointments in the Department of Statistics, the Department of Design Media Arts and the Department of Electrical Engineering. He was also a Co-PI for Center for Embedded Networked Sensing, an NSF Science and Technology Center devoted to the study of sensor networks.

Orin Herskowitz is the Senior VP of Applied Innovation and Industry Partnerships for Columbia University, as well as Executive Director of Columbia Technology Ventures (CTV).  He also is an Adjunct Professor, teaching an Intellectual Property for Entrepreneurs course.  He has served on boards or in leadership roles for a number of innovation and entrepreneurship-focused initiatives, including NYC Media Lab, PowerBridgeNY clean energy proof-of-concept center, CyberNYC, and the Columbia BioMedX

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.

Professor Jick is a leading expert in Leadership and Organizational Change.  He has had a long career of both academic and consulting work in this field. In 2020, he became the Reuben Mark Faculty Director of Organizational Character and Leadership. He has an MS and PhD from Cornell in Organizational Behavior. He was a professor at the Harvard Business School for 10 years and a visiting professor, organizational behavior-human resource management at INSEAD and London Business School. 

Eunji Kim is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science. She specializes in political communication and public opinion in American politics. Prior to joining Columbia University, she was an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. She received a joint Ph.D. in political science (Arts & Sciences) and communication (Annenberg) and an M.A. in statistics (Wharton) from the University of Pennsylvania. She received a B.A. in government from Harvard University.

Professor Knee teaches Media Mergers and Acquisitions, co-teaches The Media Industries: Public Policy and Business Strategy with Professor Tim Wu of Columbia Law School, and co-teaches Digital Investing with Adjunct Professor Jeremy Philips. He also serves as co-director of the Media & Technology Program with Professor Sarvary. Professor Knee is a Senior Advisor at Evercore Partners. Before joining Evercore as a Senior Managing Director in 2003, Professor Knee was a Managing Director and Co-head of Morgan Stanley's Media Group.

Douglas L. Maine is a Senior Advisor to Brown Brothers Harriman & Co, a 200-year-old, privately held, Wall Street financial services firm. Maine is a Director for public company Veea (Edge Computing). He is also a Director of four private companies: Olympusat (Cable Content and Distribution), Quest Technologies (IT services), Paladin Artists (Music Talent Agency) and Seismic (Robotic Clothing). He has previously served on the Board of five public and eleven private companies which were all acquired by strategic or financial investors.

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.

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).

Christopher Mayer is the Paul Milstein Professor Emeritus of Real Estate at Columbia Business School. His research explores a variety of topics in real estate and financial markets, including housing cycles, mortgage markets, debt securitization, and commercial real estate valuation. Dr. Mayer is also CEO of Longbridge Financial, an innovative reverse mortgage company focused on delivering responsible home equity products to older Americans to help finance retirement.

Susan McGregor is a Research Scholar at Columbia University’s Data Science Institute, where she also co-chairs its Center for Data, Media & Society. McGregor’s research is centered on security and privacy issues affecting journalists and media organizations.

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.

His work includes both developing mechanisms that make networks work better and faster, and also investigating the economic models that underpin the Internet and their impact on public policy like Network Neutrality. His approach to research is to incorporate fundamental theories like control theory, queueing theory, information theory, and game theory in the design and analysis of networks.

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.

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.

Professor Nguyen specializes in the study of the United States in the world, with spatial focus on Southeast Asia and temporal interest in the Cold War. She is currently working two projects. The first is a comprehensive history of the 1968 Tet Offensive and the second explores the role of gender, people’s diplomacy, and transnational networks of anti-war activism during the Vietnam War.

Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh is the Earle W. Kazis and Benjamin Schore Professor of Real Estate and Professor of Finance at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business, which he joined in July 2018 after 15 years at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He earned his PhD in Economics (2003), MSc in Financial Mathematics (2001), and MA in Economics (2001) from Stanford University, and a B.A. in Economics from the University of Ghent, Belgium (1998).

Harold Alan Pincus, M.D. is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, Co-Director of the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research at Columbia University, and Director of Quality and Outcomes Research at New York Presbyterian Hospital. Dr. Pincus also serves as a Senior Scientist at the RAND Corporation an adjunct professor at Weill-Cornell, UCLA and USUHS. Previously, he was Director of the RAND-University of Pittsburgh Health Institute and Executive Vice Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. 

Jacopo Perego is a Class of 1967 Associate Professor of Business in the Economics Division at Columbia Business School. His research specializes in the economics of information, the analysis of how economic agents strategically acquire, use, and share information. His work primarily focuses on topics such as the optimal design of information policies, the competitive provision of information, and strategic communication. Prior to joining Columbia, he was a Postdoctoral Associate at the Cowles Foundation, Yale University.

Dmytro Pokhylko is the Director of Strategic Projects and Lab-to-Market (L2M) Accelerator Network at Columbia Tech Ventures, Columbia’s tech transfer office. L2M is a cross-discipline system providing tactical and strategic guidance to 10+ accelerators to academic teams in life- and physical sciences sectors. To date, L2M programming has benefitted over 500 academic teams, providing $17M+ in non-dilutive funding and leading to over 100 commercial exits.

Maria Rahmany is currently the Director for Business Development and Portfolio Management at Columbia University’s Technology Transfer office- Columbia Technology Ventures (CTV). In her current role, Maria works with the technology licensing team to strategize, market and commercialize innovations from Columbia Investigators across research sectors, manages Columbia’s strategic partnerships with Industry as well as guides development of new accelerator programs under Columbia’s Lab to Market umbrella. 

Hilary Sample is the IDC Foundation Professor of Housing Design and coordinator of the Core III Studio at GSAPP, and Co-Founder of the New York-based architecture and design studio MOS. Since its establishment in 2003, MOS has won major national and international awards and been recognized in significant publications.

Those two tasks—rapid decision making and identifying subjective interests—are, however, exactly what Sajda and his team are succeeding in building. At the same time, Sajda is attempting to reveal the most basic neural structures in the brain that process visual information. In his Laboratory for Intelligent Imaging and Neural Computing, Sajda connects subjects to an EEG and flashes a series of images on a computer screen to record the neurological equivalent of the “Aha!” moment signaling interest or recognition.

Miklos Sarvary is the Carson Family Professor of Business and the faculty lead for the Media and Technology Program at Columbia Business School. Miklos' broad research agenda focuses on media and information marketing. His most recent papers study ad blocking, online marketplace design and content bundling on social media. Previously, he worked on user-generated content, online/mobile advertising and media and telecommunications competition.

Anya Schiffrin is the director of the Technology, Media, and Communications specialization at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and a senior lecturer who teaches on global media, innovation and human rights.  She writes on journalism and development, investigative reporting in the global south and has published

Dr. Shelton is a social and behavioral scientist with research expertise and training in dissemination and implementation science, community-based participatory research, and health equity research. She has over 15 years of experience conducting and leading qualitative and mixed-methods research in clinical and community settings focused on addressing cancer health inequities, with over 130 peer-reviewed publications.

Mr. Sherman is Senior Advisor and Chairman of the Investment Committee at BGO Strategic Capital Partners (formerly Metropolitan Real Estate), a real estate investment management business that he co-founded in 2002 and of which he served as President through 2018. (Metropolitan became part of the Investment Solutions Division of The Carlyle Group in 2013 and was acquired by BentallGreenOak in 2021). In addition, Mr. Sherman is Co-Director of the Paul Milstein Center for Real Estate and an Adjunct Professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business Administration. Mr.

Clifford Stein is the Wai T. Chang Professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, and Professor of Computer Science. He has held a range of leadership roles, previously serving as interim director of the Data Science Institute, chair of the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, and associate director of research for DSI. His research interests include the design and analysis of algorithms, combinatorial optimization, algorithms for big data, scheduling and algorithm engineering.

Professor Stiglitz accepted a joint appointment to a chaired professorship at Columbia Business School, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (in the Department of Economics) and the School of International and Public Affairs in the spring of 2001. He was the first Joel M. Stern Faculty Scholar at Columbia Business School from Fall 1999 until Spring 2001. From 1997 to 2000, he served as the World Bank's Chief Economist and Senior Vice President, Development Economics. Prior to that, he served on President Clinton's economic team as a member of the U.S.

Jan Svejnar is the Richard N. Gardner Professor of Economics and International Affairs and Director of the Center on Global Economic Governance at Columbia University. He focuses his research on (i) the effects of government policies on firms, labor and capital markets; (ii) corporate, national, and global governance and performance; and (iii) entrepreneurship, innovation and investment.

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.

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.

Wiggins is an applied mathematician with a PhD in theoretical physics working on computational biology. His research interests includes applied mathematics, mathematical biology, biopolymer dynamics, soft condensed matter, genetic networks and network inference, and machine learning.

Olajide Williams, MD, MS is a Professor of Neurology and Vice Dean of Community Health at the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. He is also Vice Chair of the Department of Neurology and a specialist in the treatment of stroke and cerebrovascular diseases. Dr. Williams is an attending physician at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and a clinical neurologist at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

Nataliya Langburd Wright is an Assistant Professor in the Management Division of Columbia Business School. Her research focuses on entrepreneurial strategy, particularly the strategic and technological drivers of global entrepreneurial growth. 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.

Laura Veldkamp is the Leon G. Cooperman Professor of Finance & Economics at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business, with an economics Ph.D. from Stanford. She has been a board member and chair of the governance committee for the American Finance Association, an editor of the Journal of Economic Theory and a frequent keynote speaker at prestigious academic conferences in both finance and economics.