Smith associate professor Sean Cao, co-founder and director of the Smith AI Initiative for Capital Market Research, received two best paper awards for research showing how humans and artificial intelligence work together to improve stock analysis and corporate disclosure in capital markets.

Stephen Loeb, retired University of Maryland Smith School professor and former department chair, was named a leading accounting ethics scholar by the Journal of Accounting Literature, which cites his foundational research and ranks UMD first among institutions in the field.

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.

Wedad Elmaghraby, Dean’s Chair of Operations Management and Senior Associate Dean for Faculty at the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business, was elected president-elect of INFORMS, the top international association for operations research, analytics and AI professionals, beginning Jan. 1, 2026.

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.

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.

Smith professor Jie Zhang and PhD alum Min Kim won the AMA’s 2025 Don Lehmann Award for their Journal of Marketing Research article on predicting online shopping preferences in dynamic, large-scale retail assortments.

Smith’s Roland Rust has been named a 2025 ISSIP Fellow for pioneering contributions to service research, including founding key conferences and journals, and advancing AI scholarship in the field. He ranks among the world’s top 100 business research scientists.

Lemma Senbet, Dean’s Chaired Professor of Finance at Smith, received the African Economic Research Consortium’s Distinguished Service Award for his longstanding contributions to economic research, policy, and capacity building across Africa. He was also recently appointed to the Bretton Woods Committee.

The Smith School has awarded 2025 Smith Internal Research Grants to 20 faculty-led teams to support high-impact research in areas including AI, entrepreneurship, labor markets, corporate communication, and online learning, fostering innovation across disciplines.