NC STATE UNIVERSITY - Key Persons
Bill uses business analytics to help make organizations make better decisions when it comes to interacting with their consumers. He develops machine learning and agent-based models to understand how people spread information both online and offline, and how they take action on that information once they have it. His interests also include the development of tools, pedagogies, and methodologies to help stakeholders make more informed, data-driven decisions.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of Economics
Denis Pelletier got his PhD in Economics from University of Montreal. He started his academic career at NCSU in 2003 and has remained ever since. Denis was tenured in 2009 and promoted to full professor in 2021. He is currently the Department Head of Economics.
Most of Denis' research is a mix of theoretical and applied econometrics. He's been interested in developing models for the time series behaviors of prices of financial assets, measurement of financial risk and assessment of risk measures. With regards to teaching, he teaches econometrics courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Given that his research and teaching is centered on analyzing and modeling data, Denis naturally got involved very quickly with BAI, starting with supervising practicums.
Donald (Donnie) Hale, Jr. is the Director of the Business Analytics Graduate Certificate as well as a lecturer in business analytics. He received his Ph.D. in December 2016 from the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina. Hale's areas of expertise include human capital resources, strategy, analytics and management. He previously was a lecturer at the Moore School of Business, and has industry experience in analytics, strategy and consulting.
As BAI Director, Kristin is responsible for supporting the daily operations of the BAI, and engaging in long-term and strategic planning. She will help build out the BAI portfolio (encompassing education, research, and industry engagement) to ensure its value grows for faculty scholars and students, the broader NCSU campus, and for business leaders and foundations. Kristin is focused on creation of an industry advisory board, and planning for an inaugural business analytics roundtable.
Bio
Leigh Shamblin brings international consulting and business leadership development experience to her roles at the NC State Poole College of Management, including her role as director of the McLauchlan Leadership Series in the Jenkins MBA program and her role as a member of the college's Executive Education faculty. Her areas of expertise and experience include:
Innovation
Social Innovation
Social Entrepreneurship
Change Management
Organizational Development
Evaluation/Assessment
Training Design/Delivery
USAID Administration
Humanitarian Leadership
Economic Development
Institutional Capacity Building
Business Coaching
Non-governmental Organizations
Job Titles:
- PM / Professor of Innovation
Bio
For 50 years, 35 years in industry and 15 years at NC State as the Executive Director of CIMS, Mr. Mugge's specialty has been "innovation management."
It was through this experience that Mugge learned that more important than technology or product innovation is business model innovation. It, by far, is the hardest to copy-and the most important to establishing long-term growth. He captured these ideas-and the actual methods to perform business model innovation-in a book he co-authored with Dr. Stephen Markham titled, Traversing the Valley of Death: A practical guide for corporate innovation leaders. More recently, Mugge got caught up in the biggest business model innovation of our time-digital transformation. In his latest book titled, Trust: The Winning Formula for Digital Leaders, he and his co-authors, Abbu and Gudergan, explore how "building trust"-and not their technological competence - sets the leaders of this phenomenon apart. Currently, Mr. Mugge shares what he has learned with organizations that intend to separate themselves from their competition by implementing a digital transformation. (Please see https://patternsofdigitization.com/ for a description of this and my colleagues work.) Quite appropriately, Mr. Mugge's research and publication activities are now focused on helping advance the timely mission of the Business Analytics Initiative (BAI).
Rakesh Ravi has been working with the Business Analytics Initiative since its inception. Before working with the BAI, he worked as a Data Scientist for BAI's predecessor - CIMS (Center for Innovation Management Studies). Rakesh began working for CIMS after graduation in 2016. One of his first projects was with the American Coatings Association where his team had to analyze unstructured data and convert the information to structured text using Natural Language Processing and then create visualization dashboards to display the structured information. This was a three year R&D project which started in 2017. Since then, he has worked on multiple other projects with Industry partners which involved analyzing unstructured data.
Apart from working as a Data Scientist for the BAI, he is a professor in the Business Management department and he teaches two undergraduate courses: Intro to Business Analytics and Web Development for Business Applications.
Bio
ichard Warr received his Ph.D. in finance from the University of Florida in 1998. Prior to coming to NC State he taught at Kansas State University. His research focuses on information transmission in markets, equity valuation, short selling, capital structure, risk management and market microstructure. His publications have appeared in such journals as the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Financial Management, the Journal of Corporate Finance, the Journal of Financial Intermediation, the Journal of Accounting Auditing and Finance. His teaching is in the area of investments, portfolio management and security analysis.
Rob Handfield is the Bank of America University Distinguished Professor of Supply Chain Management at North Carolina State University and director of the Supply Chain Resource Cooperative (http://scrc.ncsu.edu). He also serves as an adjunct professor with the Supply Chain Management Research Group at the Manchester Business School. Handfield is considered a thought leader in the field of supply chain management, and is an industry expert in the field of strategic sourcing, supply market intelligence, and supplier development. He has spoken on these subjects across the globe, including China, Turkey, Latin America, Europe, Japan, Canada, and other locals.
Sherry L. Fowler is a professor of practice, author, practitioner, and consultant in the fields of Information Technology and Business Analytics, with the specific goal of applying technology to solve business problems and strategically positioning companies to develop tech-related competitive opportunities. She has a varied and multi-year professional career of systems analysis, software design and development, project management, database design and development, data analytics, business process redesign, and IT consulting, working with large and small companies.
Fowler currently brings real-world discussions and solutions to NC State University classrooms, where she is a professor of practice in the areas of Information Systems Management, Software Development, and Business Analytics and the Director of the undergraduate Business Analytics Honors Program for the Poole College of Management. She has researched and authored a textbook in the area of spreadsheet data analytics, and her primary scholarly interest is the strategic use of information technology in business. Another key research interest is the evaluation of social media systems (both the valuable aspects and the dark side) and in social media data mining at the intersection of Information Systems and Criminology for the betterment of society. Her work blends software development methodologies, contemporary IT trends, data analytics and machine learning and deep learning techniques, and many different types of information technology tools, all in an effort to customize value-added solutions to organizations and society at large.