As Skydance expands its reach through major strategic consolidation, scale alone won’t guarantee long‑term success. Dean’s Chair in Marketing Science at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business P.K. Kannan, an expert in customer analytics and digital platforms, says the merged entity’s real opportunity lies not in size but in how effectively it connects consumer behavior across its expanded portfolio. 

Smith School marketing professors P.K. Kannan and Wendy Moe will become co-executive directors of the Marketing Science Institute in July 2026, leading research on artificial intelligence, analytics and marketing measurement while strengthening connections between academic scholarship and business practice.

The University of Maryland named marketing professor P.K. Kannan a Distinguished University Professor, its highest faculty honor, recognizing his global impact in marketing science. The appointment follows multiple recent awards, including AMA Fellow and INFORMS Society for Marketing Science Fellow honors.

P.K. Kannan, dean’s chair in marketing science at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, will be inducted into the 2026 American Marketing Association Fellows cohort, honoring his influential research, teaching and service at conference in Madrid.

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.

P.K. Kannan, Dean’s Chair in Marketing Science at the Smith School, revolutionized digital marketing research and education. His award-winning work bridges technology and marketing, solving real business problems and shaping innovative programs like the Interdisciplinary Business Honors and Smith Business Leadership Fellows.

New research by P.K. Kannan, Dean’s Chair in Marketing Science at the Smith School, and Xian Gu, PhD ’19, applies CSIS to identify hotel competitors. Unlike traditional methods, CSIS efficiently pinpoints top rivals across diverse markets, revealing asymmetric influences, spatial variation, and broader applicability beyond hospitality.

Marketing researchers at the Smith School developed a transformer-based AI model that predicts digital customer behavior, personalizes insights, and outperforms traditional methods—advancing real-time marketing analytics and ROI through individualized, multi-touchpoint journey analysis.

P. K. Kannan, associate dean and marketing professor at the Smith School, was named a Fellow of the INFORMS Society for Marketing Science, honoring his decades of influential research, mentorship, and service in digital marketing, analytics, and marketing science.