Smith And Amazon Explore Current and Future Paths in Collaborative Research

Leaders representing Amazon Research Initiatives and Amazon Web Services recently visited the Smith School to engage with faculty and doctoral students to learn about their research and potential joint projects and future funding.

Assistant Dean of Research Outreach and Long Jiang Endowed Chair in Business Hui Liao described the Nov. 10, 2025, activities in Van Munching Hall as “an important event highlighting Smith’s partnership with Amazon and our faculty’s engagement in cutting-edge research.”

An opening luncheon involved presentations from Amazon’s side. Andy Kane, who leads Amazon’s research initiatives, and Greg Grieff, a senior solutions architect for Amazon Web Services, provided insights into the company’s priorities and collaboration goals.

They were followed by remarks from two Smith faculty members who are Amazon Scholars. Dean’s Professor of Marketing Wendy Moe discussed her work supporting Amazon’s Artificial General Intelligence team, and Dean’s Chair of Operations Management and Senior Associate Dean for Faculty, Wedad Elmaghraby, shared about recently joining Amazon’s “Returns, ReCommerce and Sustainability” area.

After the luncheon, a series of lightning talks by Smith professors offered Kane and Grieff a rapid overview of the school’s diverse research portfolio. These brief presentations highlighted innovative projects aligned with Amazon’s strategic interests. The lightning talks paved the way for targeted one-on-one meetings. Faculty members delved deeper into their research with Amazon representatives, discussing technical details, methodological approaches, and practical applications. Conversations focused on identifying strong fits for collaboration, potential interdisciplinary projects, and pathways for securing external funding.

Associate Dean of Research and Doctoral Programs Rebbeca Hann played a key role in facilitating the day’s activities, and Dean Prabhudev Konana joined Liao in welcoming participants and underscoring the strategic importance of present and future Amazon-Smith collaboration.

Hann, on LinkedIn, thanked Kane and Grieff for “sharing how research powers innovation across Amazon—from retail and logistics to robotics and more.”

She added, “Smith faculty took us on a tour from last-mile logistics and urban air mobility to contextual stochastic optimization for smarter decision making at scale, to work on online platforms and digital marketing that explores how pricing, design and Amazon’s own brand presence shape what consumers actually do.”

The faculty presentations:

• Zhi-Long Chen (DOIT): Fulfillment operations and last-mile delivery
• PK Kannan (Marketing): Using AI for multi-touch attribution and media mix modeling
• Wilbur Chung (LBPP): How Amazon returns affect visitation at UPS and competitors
• Raghu Raghavan (DOIT): Last-mile logistics; middle-mile logistics; drone delivery; urban air mobility
• Alex Estes (DOIT): Contextual stochastic optimization
• Bobby Zhou (Marketing): When and how to integrate “buy now, pay later” with retail platforms
• Il-Horn Hann (DOIT): Agentic AI and Google Search in the marketing funnel
• Xinying Hao (Marketing): Digital marketing and analytics; The competitive and perceptual consequences of Amazon brand entry
• Michel Wedel (Marketing): Improving contextual advertising with theory-informed machine learning
• Balaji Padmanabhan (DOIT): AI governance
• Sean Cao (Accounting and Information Assurance): LLM bias of analyzing business news

The event provided a “good reminder of the depth of our research community: 21 Smith professors were recently identified among the top 2% most-cited scholars and scientists worldwide,” Hann further said on LinkedIn. “It’s exciting to connect that strength with partners like Amazon.”