Assistant Professor Michael Albert teaches Quantitative Analysis courses in Darden’s MBA program, and he has joint appointments in Systems Engineering and Computer Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) at UVA. His research focuses on combining machine learning and algorithmic techniques to automate the design of markets. His work has appeared in leading artificial intelligence and machine learning venues such as the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI).

Prior to joining Darden in 2018, Albert received his Ph.D. in financial economics at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. He has also worked as a visiting assistant professor of finance at the Ohio State University, as a postdoctoral researcher at the Learning Agents Research Group at the University of Texas at Austin under Peter Stone, and as a postdoctoral researcher in the artificial intelligence group headed by Vincent Conitzer at Duke University.

Professor Chao teaches operations management, innovation, and new product development courses at the Darden School of Business. His research and teaching is focused on helping managers design more innovative organizations. He has helped many entrepreneurial ventures and established companies manage their innovation and new product development processes, and currently serves as an adviser or board member for numerous early-stage ventures. He is a leader in novel curriculum design, having developed a number of cross-disciplinary experiential courses at the University focused on product development and technology commercialization.

Much of Professor Chao’s research and teaching is based on fieldwork and case studies conducted at companies such as 3M, Microsoft, Whirlpool, and Lockheed Martin, among others. Research projects include work on entrepreneurial ecosystems, innovation and design contests, and R&D portfolio management. His work has been published in leading academic journals, including Production and Operations Management, Operations Research, and Management Science.

Professor Alex Cowan teaches three courses at Darden in the area of design and digital innovation: Software Design, Software Development, and Applied Innovation (in Silicon Valley). With Darden, he also created the Coursera specialization Agile Development, one of the top 15 specializations on Coursera. His Venture Design framework is widely used by practitioners and instructors as a systematic approach to developing new products and businesses.

He has delivered workshops to student and professional audiences at such venues as General Assembly, The Lean Startup Circle, Startup Weekend, SVPMA, Swissnex, UCSC, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, the UVA iLab, and Stanford’s d.school. He currently serves on four corporate boards and as an adviser to multiple startups and “intrapreneurial” ventures.

Prior to his time at Darden, Alex has been an entrepreneur (5x) and an intrapreneur (1x). Most recently, he advised and invested in Singularity Networks (acquired by Cisco in 2019).

Professor Du specializes in strategic, organizational, and intercultural communication. He holds a Ph.D. in Strategic Communication from George Mason University and an M.A. in Interpersonal and Organizational Communication from Liberty University. With over 10 years of college teaching experience, Professor Du adopts an interdisciplinary approach to foster a supportive and engaging learning environment, emphasizing ethical and effective communication tailored to audience, purpose, and context.

Prior to joining McIntire, Professor Du taught at Baylor University and Fort Hays State University, where he developed and taught various business and organizational communication courses. His research focuses on promoting inclusive organizational identity and intercultural competence, with publications in various academic journals and presentations at national conferences. Professor Du is dedicated to preparing students to excel in a globalized world through innovative teaching methods and practical, real-world applications.

Young Hou is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration in the Strategy, Ethics and Entrepreneurship area at Darden, where he teaches core Strategy and Corporate Strategy in the full-time MBA program and Strategy and Analytics in the M.S. in Business Analytics program.

His research focuses on the dynamic interplay between firm positioning and firm resources in market and nonmarket settings. In particular, he examines how firms reposition themselves to enhance their competitiveness and increase the value of their resources. His work employs computationally scalable machine learning techniques to analyze high-dimensional data, neural networks, experiments, and interviews.

Young Hou graduated from Harvard Business School with a Ph.D. in Business Administration in Strategy. He received his Master of Arts in Statistics from Harvard University, and earned his Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Engineering from Dartmouth College, graduating magna cum laude with high honors. Prior to joining academia, he worked as a fixed income derivatives trader with PnL responsibilities at Fidelity Investments in Boston.

Dr. Ray Charles “Chuck” Howard’s research on heuristics and biases seeks to advance our understanding of when and why we make suboptimal decisions, and how our decision-making can be improved. As an example, his research on financial decision-making answers questions like: Why do we underpredict future expenses and overpredict future income? How can we make more accurate financial predictions? How can we stay on budget and avoid overspending?

Dr. Howard’s research has been published in leading academic journals such as Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Service Research, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. He has received awards from the Society for Consumer Psychology, the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, and the Behavioral Insights Group at Harvard University. Dr. Howard’s research findings have reached a global audience, including executives, policymakers, and academics in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Asia, and Africa, and his commentary has been featured by CNN, NPR Marketplace, The Conversation, The Brainy Business Podcast, The Morning Beat Podcast, Wallethub, Money Geek, and KBTX News.

Ben Leiner (Darden ’19) is an Adjunct Lecturer at Darden teaching a second-year elective, “Technology and Ethics.” His interests lie at the intersection of technology and democracy, specifically how technology helps and hinders civic participation and individual well-being. Off Grounds, he leads product marketing and consumer insights at SmartNews, a news aggregation platform with over 20 million readers worldwide. He also publishes a Substack newsletter, “The Ethical Technologist,” and hosts a podcast by the same name.

Professor James Maxham teaches Customer Analytics & Brand Strategy and global immersion courses exploring business, economics, and culture in China and Southeast Asia. His research examines quantitative consumer models that help marketing scholars and retail managers better understand customer loyalty trends. Recent work investigates how human resource management practices, service policies, product return policies, retail concept extensions, and loyalty card programs influence customer attitudes, shopping behaviors, and store performance.

Maxham is a member of the American Statistical Association, Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), and American Marketing Association. His research has appeared in Marketing Science; Journal of Marketing; Journal of Marketing Research; Journal of Applied Psychology; and Journal of Retailing, among others. He has served on the editorial review board of Journal of Marketing, and serves on the editorial review boards of Journal of Retailing and Journal of Service Research.

He was previously employed by the NCR Corporation and Russell Stover Candies.

Professor Mousavi is an expert at the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and business. His work centers on the inner workings, applications, and societal impacts of AI, including large language models (LLMs), natural language processing (NLP), and deep learning. Professor Mousavi’s work has been published in premier journals, including Information Systems Research; Journal of Management Information Systems; Journal of the Association for Information Systems; and Journal of Marketing.

His scholarly focus is grounded in real-world experience. Prior to his academic career, he served as Lead Data Scientist at State Farm Insurance Co. and advised leading consulting firms on AI initiatives. This industry background informs both his research and his teaching, where he is dedicated to cultivating the next generation of innovators. Professor Mousavi is passionate about conducting research on how technology shapes our world and preparing students to navigate its complexities.

Professor Rick Netemeyer is the Ralph A. Beeton Professor of Free Enterprise at the McIntire School of Commerce. Netemeyer’s substantive research interests include consumer and organizational behavior, public policy and social issues, health/maladaptive behaviors, and customer attitudes and beliefs as they relate to a firm’s financial outcomes. He is currently researching topics relating to financial literacy and smoking cessation. His methodological expertise includes structural equation modeling, hierarchical linear modeling, measurement and psychometrics, and survey research methodologies.

Netemeyer’s research has appeared in Journal of Consumer Research; Journal of Marketing Research; Journal of Marketing; Journal of Applied Psychology; OBHDP; Marketing Science; American Journal of Public Health; American Journal of Psychiatry; and others. He is a co-author of two textbooks pertaining to measurement and psychometrics, and is a member of the editorial review boards of Journal of Consumer Research; Journal of Marketing; and Journal of Public Policy & Marketing.

Professor Palomba teaches leadership communication and data visualization in Darden’s MBA program and management communication in the MSBA program. His teaching interests focus on how business professionals can present data results and actionable insights to key stakeholders through storytelling.

Professor Palomba’s research explores entertainment consumption and strives to understand how consumer behavior models can be built to predict consumption patterns. He also studies how technology innovations influence competition among entertainment and media firms. His research has been published in numerous academic journals, including Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services; Journal of Media Business Studies; Entertainment Computing; and Games & Culture.

During his doctoral studies, he worked with Nielsen, researching how millennials consume and use entertainment and media content, products, and services. His first position after earning his Ph.D. was as a research manager at Ipsos, where he conducted market research for HBO, Facebook, Fox Sports 1, CNN, and Sesame Street, among others. He has also independently collaborated with Bravo, WPLR 99.1, and WWE, among other firms.

He previously taught at CUNY and St. John’s University. Professor Palomba also maintains a YouTube channel dedicated to online lessons.

Professor Schuff’s research interests include user-generated content’s impact on organizations and society, the application of information visualization to decision support, and self-service business intelligence. He has published over 60 refereed journal articles, book chapters, and conference proceedings. His work has appeared in MIS Quarterly; Decision Sciences; Decision Support Systems; Information & Management; Communications of the ACM; IEEE Computer; and Information Systems Journal. Professor Schuff’s teaching interests include digital transformation, process design and improvement, data analytics and visualization, and cloud-native application design.

Before earning his doctorate, David worked as a Consultant in the Philadelphia area, specializing in network administration and end-user support.

Professor Rajkumar Venkatesan teaches three marketing courses at Darden. Focusing on analytics as it relates to marketing return on investment, customer lifetime value, mobile marketing, and the global political economy, his research has appeared in Journal of Marketing, Marketing Science, and Harvard Business Review, among others. He is a co-author of Cutting Edge Marketing Analytics. He serves as the Academic Director for the LaCross Institute for Ethical AI in Business at the Darden School of Business.

Many of his publications have earned prestigious awards (Don Lehmann Award for best dissertation-based article, MSI Alden G. Clayton award, ISBM Outstanding Dissertation Proposal Awards, ISBM award). He was recognized as a top 20 rising young scholar by the Marketing Science Institute and one of the top 40 professors under 40 by Poets & Quants, and among the top 5% of marketing strategy scholars by Journal of Marketing Education.

He has developed executive education programs or data analytics software for Capital One, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, and other companies. For his work with IBM, he was a finalist for the INFORMS Practice Prize Competition.

Ryan Wright is the Rolls-Royce Commonwealth Eminent Professor of Commerce, Co-Director of AI Research @ UVA, and Special Advisor to the Provost on AI Research at the University of Virginia. He previously served as Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives, Senior Associate Dean of Faculty and Research, and Area Coordinator for IT & Innovation, all at the McIntire School of Commerce.

In his current roles, Professor Wright leads University-wide strategic initiatives in artificial intelligence research and academics, oversees collaborative AI efforts across disciplines, and advises on the advancement of AI strategy and governance at UVA.

He teaches courses in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and innovation, which closely aligned with his research exploring how emerging technologies, including AI and cybersecurity, influence organizational behavior, and decision-making.

Professor Wright has authored more than 80 peer-reviewed publications in leading academic outlets such as MIS Quarterly; Information Systems Research; Journal of the AIS; and Journal of MIS. He has secured over $3.5 million in research funding from the National Science Foundation, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the Commonwealth of Virginia, and other institutions. His contributions have earned numerous awards for excellence in research, teaching, and service at the disciplinary, university, and school levels.

A frequent keynote speaker at national and international conferences, Professor Wright regularly addresses topics at the intersection of artificial intelligence, innovation, and cybersecurity. His research has been featured in Harvard Business Review; The Washington Post; Forbes; Fast Company; USA Today; Psychology Today; Seattle Post-Intelligencer; The Australian; and other outlets.