PhD, MS, Utah State University; MS, BS: Lebanese American University

Abbass Sharif’s specialty is in the field of statistical computing and data visualization. Professor Sharif has developed and published new multivariate visualization techniques for functional data and currently he is developing visualization techniques to study brain activity data collected via the near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) technology. Professor Sharif teaches statistics courses that range from introductory statistics to data analysis for decision-making through to advanced modern statistical learning techniques.

PhD, Stanford University; BSc, BCom, University of Auckland

Gareth James is currently serving as the Interim Dean of the Marshall School of Business. He is an expert on statistical methodology in the areas of functional data analysis and high dimensional statistics, with particular application to marketing problems. Professor James has published extensively and is a co-author of one of the leading books on statistical learning methods. He teaches both MBA and PhD courses ranging from introductory statistics through to advanced modern non-linear regression techniques. He has won several research and teaching awards, including two Deans awards for Research Excellence and three Golden Apple awards for his MBA courses. Dr. James has also served as the PI or Co-PI on several NSF research grants and as an Associate Editor for journals such as JASA, JRSSB and Operations Research. He is an elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association and a life member of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.

PhD, MS, Stanford University; BTech, IIT Delhi

Ramandeep S. Randhawa is an operations research scholar whose research interests include designing service systems, revenue management, stochastic modeling, and mechanism and incentive design. His work has been published in journals that include Management Science, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, and Operations Research. Prior to joining the Marshall School, he was a faculty member at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas.

PhD, MS, University of Southern California; MTech, IIT- Madras; BEng, Anna University

Arif Ansari is an expert in the area of data mining, business intelligence, data warehousing, and intelligent systems and technologies, a field in which he has fifteen years of research experience. He has published in IEEE Transactions on Systems and Man and Cybernetics. Professor Ansari received Marshall's Golden Apple Award in 2006.

PhD, Carnegie Mellon University; BA, BS, The Hebrew University

Yehuda Bassok's research interests include supply chain management, design and analysis of purchasing contracts, management of centralized and decentralized inventory systems, and bargaining within supply chains. His research has been published in many top journals, including Management Science and Operations Research. Prior to joining USC, he was on the faculty of Northwestern University and a visiting professor at the University of Washington. Professor Bassok served as chief system analyst of SES, a company that specialized in developing real time data collection and scheduling systems. Professor Bassok has received several teaching awards, including Marshall's Golden Apple Award in 2003.

As Chief Analytics and Science Officer for ID Analytics , Dr. Stephen Coggeshall has worked closely with the executive team since the company’s inception, and has been instrumental in building their initial technical team and product roadmap. Coggeshall has spent his 20-plus year career leading scientists to build practical solutions to difficult business programs using advanced analytics. Coggeshall holds a M.A., M.S. and Ph. D. from the University of Illinois, and a B.A. and B.S. from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.

MBA, University of Southern Califorina; BA, Loyola Marymount University

Maria Colman is the owner and founder of handmadeMaria®. The original business plan was part of her MBA at the University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business. Maria has over 30 years' experience in retail marketing, accounting management, direct sales, and education. Before joining USC, Maria taught at California State University, Los Angeles; Moorpark College; and Antelope Valley College. She brings her diverse business background, enthusiasm, and tangible experience to her classes. Her upcycled products and handmade art pieces are sold at brick and mortar and online stores.

PhD, University of Pittsburgh; MS, West Virginia University; BS, Virginia Tech

Anthony Dukes studies the economics of marketing strategies, particularly as it applies to pricing, retail and distribution channels, and antitrust. Professor Dukes’ research has appeared in the Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, Management Science, and other leading academic journals. He teaches pricing strategies and the core marketing management course in Marshall’s MBA.PM program. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Marketing Research, Management Science, Marketing Science, and Quantitative Marketing and Economics.

PhD, Stanford University; MBA, American University in Cairo; BS, Cairo University

Omar El Sawy's expertise is in digital business strategy in dynamic environments and business models for digital platforms. He served as Director of Research for Marshall's Institute for Communications Technology Management from 2001-2007. He is the author of over 100 papers and a seven-time winner of the Society for Information Management's Annual Academic Paper Award - most recently in 2015. He is currently Senior Editor of MIS Quarterly and on several editorial boards. He teaches in the MBA program and received the Marshall School's Evan C. Thompson Award for Teaching and Learning Innovation in 2012. He served as advisor to the United Nations Development Programme in Egypt, and as a Fulbright scholar in Finland. In 2008, he was inducted as the 45th Fellow of the Association of Information Systems for his research contributions.

PhD, MS, Princeton University; BS, University of Science and Technology of China

Yingying Fan's research interests include high dimensional statistical inference, classification and variable selection, nonparametric statistics, and financial econometrics. Her papers have been published in journals including the Annals of Statistics, Journal of the American Statistical Association, Journal of Econometrics, and Journal of Financial Econometrics. She was Lecturer in the Department of Statistics at Harvard University from 2007-2008. She is the recipient of National Science Foundation Grant (2009-2012, PI), 2010 Zumberge Individual Award from USC's James H. Zumberge Faculty Research and Innovation Fund (2010-2011, PI), and 2010 Dean's Award for Research Excellence. She also serves in the membership committee of the International Chinese Statistical Association (2009-Present).

PhD, Utah State University; MS, BS, Vilnius University

Robertas Gabrys has research interest in functional data analysis and its applications in environmental sciences, financial econometrics, and space physics; statistical computing, and actuarial mathematics. His work has been published in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Journal of the American Statistical Association, and Austrian Journal of Statistics.

WF Umi Hsu (pronouns: they/them) leads design strategy, digital and data initiatives at the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. Hsu is a strategic designer and public humanist who engages with research and organizing agendas for equity in arts, technology, and civic life. They have received fellowships and awards from National Endowment for the Arts, American Council for Learned Society, Shuttleworth Foundation, GovTech, and LA Metro. Hsu currently teaches digital analytics strategy in the MS Business Analytics program at USC Marshall and in the MFA in Media Design Practices program at ArtCenter College of Design.

PhD, University of Maryland

Lan Luo’s primary research interests relate to applications of artificial intelligence in marketing. She publishes and serves on the editorial review board of premier marketing journals such as Journal of Marketing Research and Marketing Science, among others. Professor Luo is the recipient of several prestigious research awards, including the John D.C. Little Award, the Donald R. Lehmann Award (twice), and the Paul E. Green Award finalist (twice). At USC Marshall, she has been granted the Dean’s Research Excellence Award and Golden Apple Award for her teaching excellence. Professor Luo also consulted for commercial litigation involving product defects and counterfeits.

PhD, Princeton University; MS, BS, University of Science and Technology of China

Jinchi Lv's research interests include high dimensional statistical inference, variable selection and machine learning, financial econometrics, and nonparametric and semiparametric methods. His papers have been published in the Annals of Statistics, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Statistica Sinica, Journal of Econometrics, and Journal of Financial Econometrics. He serves as an associate editor of Statistica Sinica since 2008. He is the recipient of National Science Foundation CAREER Award, National Science Foundation Grant, 2008 Zumberge Individual Award from USC's James H. Zumberge Faculty Research and Innovation Fund, and 2009 Dean's Award for Research Excellence.

Inga Maslova is an applied statistician specializing in time series analysis, machine learning, wavelet techniques, functional data analysis, big data, and applications to finance, business analytics, economics, hydrology, remote sensing, precision agriculture, and climate change problems. She has taught and developed courses in statistical learning, business statistics, data analytics and visualization. To her classroom she brings her own experience from consulting for Cisco, working with the World Bank on business cycle synchronization; analyzing drone data to help farmers make better crop management decisions at Utah Water Research Lab; using statistical learning models to forecast commodity prices. In 2018 she received a Golden Apple Teaching Award for teaching excellence. Before joining USC, Inga was a faculty at American University, Washington DC. She received her BS (Summa Cum Laude) in Mathematical Statistics from Vilnius University, Lithuania; MS and PhD in Statistics from Utah State University.

Milan Miric joined the IS Group within the DSO Department in 2016. His research tries to understand basic questions about how firms can capture and create value in digital industries. In particular, his research tries to understand how the unique structural features of digital industries (network effects, low costs of innovating, non-monetary motivations) influence the process by which firms capture and create value. His work is largely empirical combining large-scale panel datasets with interviews and field work. His research work draws heavily on insights from psychology, economics, and sociology but tries to contribute to the literature on information systems and innovation.

Prior to the KPMG acquisition of Wise Window, Inc., a data analytics company, in April 2012, Sid Mohasseb was the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board for Wise Window, Inc. At KPMG, he is a Managing Director for Data Analytics and the national lead for Data Analytics Driven Dynamic Strategy & Execution practice as well as a member of the KPMG US DA leadership team. Additionally, he is an Adjunct professor at University of Southern California (USC) Marshall Business School as well as Argyros School of Business and Economics at Chapman University.

PhD, University of Southern California; MBA, University of Washington; BEng, Waseda University

Hiroshi Ochiumi is an operations management scholar. His research interests include supply chain management, design and analysis of contracts, and behavioral aspects of decision making. He teaches classes on operations management and designing spreadsheet-based business models. Prior to receiving his PhD, Professor Ochiumi worked for Hilti Japan and Goldman Sachs.

PhD, MPhil, MS, New York University; BA, Cornell University

Dawn Porter is a statistician who has published in Management Science and is the coauthor of Basic Econometrics (fifth edition). Prior to joining USC, she served on the faculty at Georgetown University. Professor Porter has consulted for KPMG Consulting, Ginnie Mae, Inc., and Toys R Us.

Cornell University BA, Dean's list,TA/instructor at multiple places

Cornell University, TA/instructor at multiple places Arsames Qajar is a professor in the DSO Department at the USC Marshall School of Business where he teaches database architecture. He is also the CTO of OurOffice, an AI powered SaaS enterprise platform for managing Diversity and Inclusion. OurOffice is creating the first, true science of diversity and inclusion to dissect and anticipate issues while also, and most importantly, providing pertinent, impactful solutions to organizations. At OurOffice, we are building the future for a more equitable, inclusive workplace. Arsames is also a hands-on full-stack software engineer, Women Who Code mentor, and startup advisor.

Phil Rogers received a B.S. in Mathematics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and both an M.S. and Ph.D. in Operations Research from the University of California at Berkeley, with minors in Statistics and Mathematical Economics. During a 33-year career at Exxon Corporation, Phil developed many sophisticated mathematical models that were used to optimize a wide variety of the Corporation's business operations. He then joined the University of Houston, where he taught courses in statistics, business modeling and decision making and was awarded a university-wide teaching excellence award. Following a year-and-a-half stay at Arizona State University, where he taught business modeling and optimization, Phil joined the Marshall School of Business, where he coordinates the undergraduate core statistics course and teaches in the MBA program.

Vivek Sharma teaches business innovation to graduate data science & MBA students at USC Marshall. He is CEO & Founder of InStride, a learning services enterprise designed to achieve significant social impact through partnerships with universities and employers, providing employees the opportunity to earn the highest-quality degrees. Previously, Vivek was SVP, Digital Guest Experience & eCommerce for Disney Parks, Experiences & Products, where he led global eCommerce, physical-digital convergence and AI integration. Vivek also served as GM of Yahoo! Mail & Messenger, VP of product management for Yahoo! Search & Commerce, and as an associate partner in McKinsey & Company’s Technology practice. He graduated from Indian Institute of Technology and holds an MBA from INSEAD.

Peng is interested in developing quantitative methodologies for the betterment of society. His current research focuses on optimization in matching markets, with applications in school choice, public housing, and online marketplaces. His research on school choice has won multiple awards, including the ACM SIGecom Doctoral Dissertation Award, the INFORMS Public Sector Operations Best Paper Competition, and the INFORMS Doing Good with Good Operations OR Student Paper Competition. Prior to joining USC, he completed a PhD in operations research at MIT, and was a post-doctoral researcher at Microsoft Research.

PhD, Princeton University; BS, University of Toronto

Xin Tong's current research interests focus on asymmetric statistical learning, addressing challenges in the Neyman-Pearson classification paradigm, data distortion, sampling bias, asymmetric groups in classification and clustering, and partial knowledge in clustering and community detection. He has published papers in journals that include Science Advances, Journal of American Statistical Association, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B and the Journal of Machine Learning Research. Professor Tong's research has been partially supported by US NSF and NIH.

NICK VYAS, BS, MBA, Ed.D, University of Southern California

Dr. Nick Vyas, a practitioner in operations management and organizational excellence through the application of Blended Quality Management, AI, ML, RPA, Blockchain, and Data Analytics received his Doctor of Education from USC with his published dissertation on Conceptualization of Higher Education Excellence System (HEES): Use of Advance Data Analytics and Blended Quality Management. A Subject Matter Expert in End-to-End Global Supply Chain Management (GSCM), Vyas has led business transformation for fortune 100 companies. As USC CGSCM’s Executive Director/ Co-founder, Director of MS GSCM and as an Assistant Professor, he was presented with the Golden Apple Award for teaching excellence and recognized as a “Supply Chain Leader” for the APICS Excellence Awards. As a thought leader, he speaks at conferences on global trade, disruptive technology and GSCM. Vyas serves to make GSCM education accessible through the Gift of Knowledge scholarship at USC MS GSCM program and Supply Chain Professionals without Borders. Working closely with students, Vyas consulted for over 25 global operations across various sectors. He integrated technology and directed teams that both optimized speed-to-market and managed cost/quality.

PhD, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA. MS, Shanghai University of Technology.

Prior to joining USC, Robert has 7 years of management consulting experience with Ernst & Young and Deloitte & Touch. In 2001, he joined the Business Analytics and Optimization Group of Nestle USA. As a principal of the group, Robert is the mastermind behind many holistic solutions for some of the very complex business problems. He specializes in using OR, large-scale optimization, machine learning, statistics, visualization, and other analytic techniques on complex business problems. He has successfully lead the design, development, and implementation of solutions for Supply Chain Network Design, Inventory Optimization, Supply Planning, Deployment Planning, Network Capacity Planning, Trade Optimization, and Transportation.