Information and Decision Science (IDSc) Faculty

Research interests in the Information and Decision Sciences Department address the management of information in support of decision-making, and the management of information and information technology for organizations. The faculty has a reputation for developing the conceptual foundations of their fields of interest. In the decision support area, research has focused on managerial problem solving and decision making, including work on individual and group decision processes, expert systems, probability forecasting and problem formulation. In the organizational resource management area, research has focused on human/computer systems, the use of graphics, strategic thinking involving information systems, and organization structure appropriate for the information management function. Click here for a list of detailed biographies.

	Carl Adams is Professor of the Information and Decision Sciences Department. Research interests include the concept of IS/IT organizational capabilities and their relationship to IS/IT functional strategy, problem formulation as a critical skill, and the process of design as a general competence and specifically in the context of new process design and business development. Teaching interests are courses or parts of courses that relate to my research interests.
	Gedas Adomavicius is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information and Decision Sciences at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. His research interests include personalization technologies, customer relationship management, knowledge discovery and data mining, and e-commerce technologies. His current research deals with multidimensional recommender systems and novel techniques for customer modeling. He has published in several leading academic journals, including “Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery” and “IEEE Computer.” He teaches an MBA course on Internet Technologies.
	Norman Chervany is a Professor of Information and Decision Sciences. He joined the Carlson School in September 1967 with his MBA and DBA from Indiana University. His teaching and research interests revolve around the relationships among information technology/systems and organizational strategy, organizational design, work design, and project implementation. The common theme that ties all of these areas together is that ultimately a large portion of technology success or failure rests with the way in which the "human issues" are handled.
	Shawn Curley is a Professor in the Information and Decision Sciences Department. He joined the Carlson School in September 1986 after completing an M.A. in Mathematics and a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His research interests are in individual decision making–how decisions are made and how they can be aided. Of particular interest is the role of uncertainty in decision making–how we can capture individuals' judgments of uncertainty, how we can evaluate the quality of such judgments, and how uncertainty does and should impact our decisions. His teaching interests include data analysis techniques as tools for decision making, the use of desktop technology to support decision making, and the application of psychological and decision theory to the practice of management.
	Alok Gupta is an Associate Professor if Information Systems at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota; from 1996 to 2001 he was an Assistant Professor at Dept. of OPIM, University of Connecticut. He received his Ph.D. in Management Science and Information from the University of Texas, Austin. His research has been published in various information systems, economics, and computer science journals such as ISR, CACM, JMIS, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Computational Economics, Decision Support Systems, IEEE Internet Computing, International Journal of Flexible Manufacturing Systems, Information Technology Management, and Journal of Organizational Computer and Electronic Commerce. In addition, his articles have been published in several leading books in the are of economics of electronic commerce. He was awarded a prestigious NSF CAREER Award for his research on dynamic pricing mechanisms on the internet. From 1999-2001, he served as co-director of Treibick Electronic Commerce Initiative (TECI), an endowed research initiative at Dept. of OPIM, University of Connecticut. He is also an affiliate of the Center for Research in Electronic Commerce (CREC) at the University of Texas at Austin. He serves on the editorial boards of DSS and Brazilian Electronic Journal of Economics. He teaches courses in the areas of computer networking, electronic commerce, decision support, IT infrastructure, and computer programming at the undergraduate, MBA and Ph.D. levels.
	Paul Johnson is Carlson Professor of Decision Sciences and Adjunct Professor of Psychology and Computer Science. He is a member of the Cognitive Sciences Center as well as the Center for Political Psychology. His research focuses on the study of expertise in complex problem solving and decision-making tasks, decision failures that arise from the misperception or misrepresentation of information (e.g., deception), and the use of knowledge resources and decision technologies in professional and technical work. Professor Johnson and his students have investigated decision-making activities of individuals and organizations in a variety of settings, including health care (diagnosis and best practice in the management of chronic diseases), auditing (fraud detection), semiconductor manufacturing (troubleshooting), software engineering (maintenance) and foreign-exchange trading. Professor Johnson's teaching interests include cognitive science, intelligent systems, knowledge management and managerial decision making.
	Robert J. Kauffman is a Professor and Chair of Information and Decision Sciences. He has an M.A. from Cornell University (1979), and worked in international banking and corporate finance in New York City. He later received an M.S. in Systems Science (1985) and a Ph.D. in Industrial Administration (1988) from the Graduate School of Industrial Administration at Carnegie Mellon University. He teaches courses at CSOM on Introductory E-Commerce (EC), B2B EC, EC in Financial Services, and Decision Technologies. His research emphasizes justification of IT infrastructure and EC application investments, Internet standards and technology adoption, the performance of Internet markets, EC-driven changes in industrial organization, and evaluation of IT investments in the financial services, hospitality, airlines and travel industries. Professor Kauffman has published in journals such as Information Systems Research, Communication of the ACM, Organization Science, MIS Quarterly, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Journal of Management Information Systems (JMIS), and International Journal of Electronic Commerce (IJEC). He currently serves on the editorial boards of Management Science, JMIS, and IJEC. He also chaired the Workshop on IS and Economics (WISE) in 1991 and 1997. He currently chairs e-commerce, electronic markets and organizational strategy mini-tracks at the annual Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences (HICSS), and has been active in this capacity for ICIS, INFORMS IS/T and the International Conference on E-Commerce.
	Gautam Ray is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information and Decision Sciences of the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota.
	Ching Ren is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information and Decision Sciences of the Carlson School of Management. Research interests include how to design and manage group processes and information technologies to promote effective collaboration. She has examined this question in several domains such as knowledge-intensive companies, healthcare organizations, and online communities. She employs a wide variety of research methods, using data from field observations, surveys, experiments, and computer simulations.
	Fred Riggins is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information and Decision Sciences of the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. His teaching interests include electronic commerce, e-business strategies, economics of information systems, and telecommunications policy. His research focuses on new business models for Internet-based commerce, strategies for implementing interorganizational systems, measuring the value of information systems, and policies affecting the diffusion of information technology. He has spoken at many conferences and published in several leading academic journals including Management Science, Communications of the ACM, Journal of Management Information Systems, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, and the Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce. He received his Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Industrial Administration at Carnegie Mellon University where he was the winner of the 1994 William W. Cooper Doctoral Dissertation Award in Management Science. He was also one of three finalists for the 1994 International Conference in Information Systems Doctoral Dissertation Awards. Prior to joining the Carlson School, he was a professor at Georgia Tech where he was co-founder of the iXL Center for Electronic Commerce, developed and served Faculty Director of the “Strategies for E-Business” executive education program, and developed a popular graduate course on Electronic Commerce that has been highlighted in the Chronicle of Higher Education and The Industry Standard.
	Mani Subramani is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information and Decision Sciences at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. His research interests include the management of relationships between organizational groups and between organizations, knowledge management and electronic commerce. His paper titled the "Dot Com Effect: The Impact of E-Commerce Announcements on the Market Value of Firms" won the Best Paper award at the 20th International Conference on Information Systems in December 1999. He teaches a doctoral seminar on Organization Theory, a course on Electronic Commerce in the CSOM International Program and one on Application Development.

Retired and Emeritus Faculty

Emeritus Faculty	Gordon Davis is internationally known as one of the principal founders and intellectual architects of the academic field of information systems. In 1967, he and two colleagues initiated the first academic degree programs in management information systems and established the Management Information Systems Research Center (MISRC). His book, Management Information Systems: Conceptual Foundations, Structure, and Development (1974; 1985, McGraw-Hill), is recognized as a foundational classic in the field. He has published 19 other textbooks and over 200 journal articles. He is the Executive Editor of MIS Quarterly and is on the editorial boards of numerous other journals. He serves as the USA Representative to the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Technical Committee 8 (Information Systems). He has been involved in virtually all of the major developments in the information systems segment of the computing community, including the founding of the principal conference, the International Conference on Information Systems, and the formation of the Association for Information Systems (AIS), an international academic society, and is the 1998 President. He is the Honeywell Professor of Management Information Systems, an endowed chair in the Carlson School of Management. He has been awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Zurich and the University of Lyon III and has been named a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.
Emeritus Faculty	Gordon Everest is an Associate Professor in the Information and Decision Sciences Department. He received an SM degree from the MIT Sloan School in 1965 and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School in 1974 with a dissertation entitled "Managing Corporate Data Resources" which eventually became a text published by McGraw-Hill. His teaching, research, and consulting interests include Database management systems, database design (both ER diagramming and Object-Role modeling, for which he is a staunch advocate and is the focus of the advanced database design class), database administration, and data warehousing. He is also interested in the legal aspects of computing (privacy, intellectual property, contracting, antitrust, ethical business practices, etc. especially as they relate to the internet). He has served as an expert legal witness to several law firms. He is a Canadian citizen, an avid badminton player, and enjoys singing in the church choir.
	J. David Naumann is an Associate Professor in the Information and Decision Sciences Department. His research interests focus on the interactions of telecommunications developments, especially the Internet, with the architecture and design of information systems of all kinds. Technology drivers have enabled new applications such as E-Commerce, and they continue to provide opportunities for significant advances through both new applications and changes in existing ones. The challenge is to sort out the significant and high-potential implications from the merely interesting. His teaching includes application development and programming, but focuses on telecommunications, Internet technologies, and networking. He is currently responsible for both MBA and undergraduate lab facilities reserved for MIS students.
	Les Wanninger is a faculty member in the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, instructing undergraduate and MBA students in Information & Decision Sciences. His current research focuses on electronic commerce and mobile and wireless communications. He is Principal Investigator of a National Science Foundation research program on "The Role of Customer Relationships in Electronic Commerce". His service activities include Director of the Information Industry Initiative, Chair of the UM e-Commerce Conference series, Director of the Global Initiative on Wireless and Mobile, and Associate Director of the MISRC.