Faculty Profile
Ph.D. Syracuse University
Ritu Agarwal is Professor and the Robert H. Smith Dean’s Chair of Information Systems
at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park.
She is also the founder and Director of the Center for Health Information and Decision Systems
at the Smith School. Dr. Agarwal has published over 80 papers on information technology management
topics in journals such as Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, Management Science,
Communications of the ACM, Journal of Management Information Systems, Decision Sciences, IEEE Transactions,
and Decision Support Systems, and has made presentations at a variety of national
and international conferences. Her current research is focused on the use of IT in healthcare settings,
technology-enabled strategic transformations in various industrial sectors, and consumer behavior
in technology-mediated settings.
Professor Agarwal has worked extensively with Fortune 500 companies on a variety of research
and consulting engagements and made several presentations to groups of senior IT and business executives.
She has testified before the National Committee on Health and Vital Statistics and the
US Department of Health based on her research on IT and healthcare. Her research has been
sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Society for Information Management,
US Department of Labor, NSF, and DARPA.
Professor Agarwal is the Editor-in-Chief of Information Systems Research. Previously she served
three year terms as Senior Editor at MIS Quarterly and Associate Editor for Management Science.
Dr. Agarwal was a member of the INFORMS board as Vice President for Subdivisions from 2004 to 2006,
and served as a Vice President in the Association for Information Systems from 2002 to 2005.
She has been appointed a Standing Member of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s expert review
panel on Healthcare Effectiveness and Outcomes Research for the period 2010-2012.
She has served in leadership roles in a number of major professional conferences during her career,
including Program Chair for the International Conference on Information Systems.
She is a member of ACM, AIS, INFORMS, and the Academy of Management. In 2011 she was appointed as a Fellow
of the Association for Information Systems
In 2010 Professor Agarwal initiated and chaired the first annual Workshop on Health Information Technology
and Economics (WHITE 2010), a multi-disciplinary research conference to engage the research, policy and
practice communities in understanding the role of digital technologies in healthcare transformation.
WHITE has now become an annual event sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
and Academy Health, the pre-eminent professional organization in health services research.
