The Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland (UMD) has joined Deloitte to launch the Deloitte Initiative for AI and Learning (DIAL), an artificial intelligence (AI) research initiative to help expand learning and development opportunities for faculty and students across the university’s various colleges.

On April 19, 2022, the Smith Analytics Consortium proudly kicked off its third annual Datathon sponsored by Deloitte, one of the consortium’s closest industry sponsors. The 9-day-long, data-focused competition provided University of Maryland students the opportunity to use their problem-solving, analytical, and data visualization skills.

Maryland Smith’s Wedad Elmaghraby, professor of operations management and management science, was awarded the Distinguished Service Award for 2021 by the Manufacturing and Service Operations Management (MSOM) society.

Industry Experts Help Coach, Evaluate Maryland Smith Students Through 2-Week Analytics Competition A team of Maryland Smith undergraduates from an "Introduction to Optimization" class earned first place in the annual Datathon organized by the Smith Analytics Consortium (SAC) with support from Deloitte. The competition, which concluded on April 30, 2021, was virtual and consisted of 12 student teams representing undergraduate, MBA, and MS (marketing analytics and information systems) programs.

Smart machines do many things better than humans, but Deloitte executive Bill Eggers has good news for workers worried about a robot apocalypse. “This very dystopian narrative that we see, there’s no evidence for it historically,” he said March 29, 2019, at the third annual Smith Analytics Consortium thought leadership conference at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. “In every other period of technological revolution, we’ve created more jobs than we’ve lost.”

Deloitte hosted seven faculty affiliates of the Smith Analytics Consortium for a meeting of the minds on Jan. 31, 2019, at the company’s Greenhouse in Washington, D.C.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — With lenient return policies common, about 9 percent of purchases at brick-and-mortar stores are returned and 25 percent to 30 percent of online orders are sent back yearly in the United States. Where do these items end up? In many cases, the likes of market vendors, wholesale liquidators, eBay Power sellers, and "mom and pop" stores purchase the goods via online auctions and resell the merchandise.

Research by Rebecca Hamilton and Wedad Elmaghraby The goal of business is to maximize profits, so it just didn’t make sense to researchers at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business why many retailers and suppliers sign deals that leave money on the table.

To attract more online auction bidders and drive up prices, two things matter: how long an auction is active and the day of the week it closes, finds new research.