Smith And Amazon Explore Current and Future Paths in Collaborative Research
Leaders from Amazon Research Initiatives and AWS visited UMD’s Smith School on Nov. 10, 2025, to explore research collaborations. Faculty shared innovative projects in AI, logistics, sustainability, and digital marketing, strengthening Smith’s partnership with Amazon and highlighting opportunities for future funding.
Raghavan Named 2025 INFORMS Fellow
S. Raghu Raghavan, Dean’s Professor of Management Science and Operations Management, was named an INFORMS Fellow—one of the field’s highest honors—for pioneering research in operations research, analytics, and AI, recognizing his lifetime academic, research, and professional contributions.
Smith Research Recognized for ‘Potential to Create Positive Societal Changes’
Doctoral student Eunseong Jang at the Smith School developed new statistical models to expand incomplete datasets, giving law enforcement and policymakers tools to fight drug trafficking. His NSF-funded research, guided by Margret Bjarnadottir and S. Raghu Raghavan, earned a $6,000 award for its societal impact.
Improved LISA Analysis for Zero-Heavy Crack Cocaine Seizure Data
Local Indicators of Spatial Association (LISA) analysis is a useful tool for analyzing and extracting meaningful insights from geographic data. It provides informative statistical analysis that highlights areas of high and low activity. However, LISA analysis methods may not be appropriate for zero-heavy data, as without the correct mathematical context the meaning of the patterns identified by the analysis may be distorted. We demonstrate these issues through statistical analysis and provide the appropriate context for interpreting LISA results for zero-heavy data.
Solving the Urban Air Mobility Problem
Smith professors Raghu Raghavan and Bruce Golden's research on Urban Air Mobility (UAM) explores routing and scheduling challenges for electric flying taxis. Their study addresses passenger demand, battery management, and real-world logistics, aiming to maximize transport efficiency in future smart cities.
Mapping the Cocaine Supply Chain
A team of UMD researchers is studying how to map and disrupt the cocaine supply chain. The research is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and is led by the Smith School’s S. Raghu Raghavan.
Smith Researchers Address Liver Transplant Geographic Inequities
The recent overhaul of the federal policy on allocating deceased donor livers has not significantly improved geographical inequities and has led to a greater loss in viable organs, according to findings from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.
Smith School Awards 14 Faculty Grants for Innovative Research
Fourteen faculty teams at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business have been awarded three-year grants from the school for research projects that address the world’s grand challenges and reimagine learning in support of the University of Maryland’s vision and the Smith School’s strategic plan.
Faculty Members Earn Distinction at 2022 INFORMS Annual Meeting
Smith Chair of Management Science Michael Fu, was presented with the George E. Kimball Medal for recognition of distinguished service to the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), the operations research profession and that of management sciences.