Maryland Smith's Xian Gu, P.K. Kannan and Liye Ma, have been selected as a finalist for the 2018 Marketing Science Institute/H. Paul Root Award for their research paper, "Selling the Premium in Freemium." The award is given to a paper published in the Journal of Marketing that has made a significant contribution to the advancement of the practice of marketing in a calendar year.

Gu is a PhD candidate in marketing who was previously a PhD student in the Department of Economics at Stony Brook University. She received her bachelor's degree in economics from Peking University. Her research interests are in quantitative marketing with applications of treatment effect estimation methods, dynamic structural models, field experiments and machine learning to the substantive areas of omnichannel marketing and mobile marketing.

Kannan is the Dean’s Chair in Marketing Science. His research expertise is on marketing modeling, applying statistical, econometric, machine learning, and AI methods to marketing data. His current research stream focuses on digital marketing, mobile marketing, attribution modeling, media mix modeling, new product/service development and customer relationship management (CRM).

Ma is an associate professor of marketing. He teaches the undergraduate Marketing Research Methods class and the Data Science class in the MS Marketing Analytics program. His research focuses on the dynamic interactions of firms and consumers on the internet, social media, and mobile platforms.