Five new instructors joined the ranks of tenure-track faculty in the Business School this year.
Ram Bala joined the OMIS department in January 2012, from the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad (India), where he had taught in Operations Management since 2006. His research interests include competition in the software-as-a-service industry and pricing, competition, and product lifespan in the pharmaceutical industry. He earned his Ph.D. in Management Science from UCLA and received his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology. He has worked as a software consultant and as a strategic analyst in the private sector.
John Ifcher has become a tenure-track assistant professor in the department of Economics, where he previously served as an academic year lecturer. His recent research focuses on social welfare programs, subjective well-being, time preference, and overconfidence. One recent paper investigates the impact of positive affect on time preference; another investigates the effect of welfare reform on happiness. He has published articles in the American Economic Review, the Eastern Economic Journal, and Poverty and Public Policy. Ifcher received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley. He also received a M.P.A. degree from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and a B.S. in computer science and psychology from the University of Michigan. He worked for the city of New York as the Senior Advisor to the Parks Commissioner between 1993 and 1998.
Haibing Lu joined the Operations Management and Information Systems (OMIS) department from Rutgers University in New Jersey, where he was a teaching assistant as he completed his doctoral studies. His research interests include work in information systems security and data mining, particularly exploring privacy and security issues in data-oriented applications. Lu has co-authored papers appearing in the Journal of Computer Security and IEEE Transaction on Dependable and Security Computing, and has presented his work at many international conferences. He received a B.S. and M.S. in mathematics from Xi’an Jiaotong University (China), and received his Ph.D. in management of information technology from Rutgers University (New Jersey) in 2011.
In the Marketing Department, Savannah Wei Shi focuses on dynamics in consumer decision-making, e-commerce, and retail management. She has co-authored two book chapters (Cluster Analysis, and Factor Analysis) in the forthcoming Wiley International Encyclopedia of Marketing, and presented research at the INFORMS Marketing Science Conference in Germany. Shi earned a bachelor of science degree in marketing from Fudan University (China), and received her Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 2011.
David Zimbra‘s research in the OMIS department focuses on data, text, and web mining, social media analytics, and business intelligence. His research has appeared in MIS Quarterly, IEEE Intelligent Systems, and the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication. Zimbra earned the BSC in Operations and Management Information Systems, an MS in Management Information Systems from Santa Clara University, and received his Ph.D. in Management Information Systems from the University of Arizona in 2011. His private sector experience includes work at Ernst & Young and Network Appliance.
Current Minds@Work Winter 2012 Issue Click on the Image to View
