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.

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.

Often referred to as “superwoman” by colleagues for her tireless work, Ritu Agarwal has dedicated her career to enhancing the experience of students at Maryland Smith. Now, the Distinguished University Professor and Dean’s Chair of Information Systems will be recognized for her hard work and accomplishments as the recipient of the highest honor the University of Maryland bestows, the President’s Medal.

Maryland Smith’s Ritu Agarwal was elected as a fellow of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). The honor is in recognition of her lifetime contributions to the profession and is reserved for only the very top academics and professionals in the field.

Maryland Smith’s Serhiy Kozak won the 2020 Fama-DFA Prize for the best paper published in the Journal of Financial Economics in the area of capital markets and asset pricing. Kozak’s research, “Shrinking the Cross Section,” was published in the February 2020 issue of the journal.

Maryland Smith’s Bruno Pellegrino won the 2021 Charles River Associates Award for the best paper on corporate finance, announced June 17 at the Western Finance Association’s annual conference. Pellegrino’s research looks at the rise of oligopolies in the United States with a groundbreaking new model for economists to more accurately measure competition in U.S. markets and the consequences for consumers.

Maryland Smith’s Gah-Yi Ban won the 2021 Best Operations Management paper in Operations Research from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), an international society for practitioners in the fields of operations research, management science and analytics.