The University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business is launching a nine-month, fully online certificate program designed for technical and non-technical professionals interested in leveraging data to draw insights and drive smarter decision-making for their organization.

The Center for Health Information and Decision Systems (CHIDS) at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business was selected as a key contributor in a $50 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in a new effort to enhance diversity in artificial intelligence and machine learning research and initiatives. NIH’s Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Consortium to Advance Health Equity and Researcher Diversity (AIM-AHEAD) program was created to get more diverse researchers and underrepresented communities involved in the development of AI/ML models to address health disparities and inequities. CHIDS will steer the AI leadership training for healthcare professionals in the Data Science Training Core of AIM-AHEAD.

Maryland Smith’s Michael Fu has won the 2021 INFORMS Saul Gass Expository Writing award, becoming only the second Maryland Smith professor to earn the distinction.

Noted again as “global strategists, experts on entrepreneurship and the transformational rise of emerging markets, foremost China and India,” Maryland Smith’s Anil K. Gupta and Haiyan Wang, MBA ’95, were recently named in the 2021 Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers.

What is the best pathway to unlock opportunities that will allow Americans to realize their dreams? And is that route lined with government programs or free enterprise? Those questions were at the center of a debate tour recently hosted by Maryland Smith’s Ed Snider Center for Enterprise and Markets, in partnership with The Steamboat Institute.

When we think about AI, we don’t normally picture it evaluating telehealth calls or monitoring patients after surgery. But those are some of the ways that artificial intelligence is transforming healthcare, says Maryland Smith’s Gordon Gao.

Maryland Smith’s Michael Fu received a National Science Foundation grant for research to improve kidney transplants. The project combines technological advances in medical science with operations research and artificial intelligence-based approaches to dramatically improve the kidney donor-recipient matching process to lead to better outcomes for end-stage kidney disease patients.

The University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business has named Russ Wermers as the Paul J. Cinquegrana ’63 Endowed Chair in Finance. Named for the late Paul J. Cinquegrana ’63, the newly created endowed professorship was established by a gift bequeathed to Maryland Smith by his late wife, Betty Cinquegrana.

Across business industries, leaders are interested in applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to their work, but knowing when to apply them is just half of the battle. The bigger challenge is knowing how to make sense of data and leverage it to make the right operational and strategic decisions.

“The reason we do research is for all those moments of true inspiration,” Maryland Smith’s Rajshree Agarwal told a group of undergraduate students last Thursday. “My PhD students inspire me as they showcase how entrepreneurship and innovation helps create solutions to the world’s thorniest challenges and unmet needs.”