Rensselaer Catalog 2025-2026
Lally School of Management
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Dean: Liad Wagman
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs: Brian Clark
Associate Dean for Research: Chris McDermott
Area Head, Finance and Accounting: Bill Francis
Area Head, Operations, Supply Chain, Marketing, Information Science, Business Economics, Business Analytics: Jason Kuruzovich
Area Head, Strategy, Human Resources, Organizational Behavior, Ethics, Entrepreneurship: Timothy Golden
Area Head, Information Technology and Web Science: Jason Kuruzovich
Director, Undergraduate Programs: Kevin A. Fletcher
Director, MBA Program: Johan Maharjan
Director, M.S. Programs: Gaurav Jain
Director, M.S. Information Technology: Kathleen Fontaine
Director, Ph.D. Program: Hakan Hekimoglu
Lally School Home Page: www.lally.rpi.edu
The RPI Lally School of Management develops future business leaders with a passion for innovation and the skills to work across business functions in today’s dynamic, technology-driven economy. Our programs emphasize innovation, entrepreneurship in the global economy, and data-driven decision making.
Lally students benefit from an education that:
Lally students engage with internationally respected faculty and collaborate with peers from RPI’s Schools of Architecture, Engineering, Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and Science—as well as with the Rensselaer Technology Park and the Severino Center for Technological Entrepreneurship.
Undergraduate Programs
The Lally School offers bachelor’s degrees in:
Students may also pursue undergraduate concentrations in:
Minors are available in:
Additionally, Lally offers dual degrees with the Schools of Engineering, Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and Science. A number of these dual majors have been formalized in the catalogue, including:
- Business & Sustainability (Business & Sustainability Studies)
- Business & ITWS (Business & Information Technology & Web Science)
- Business & Design (Business & Design, Innovation and Society)
- Business & Economics (Business & Economics)
- Strategic Marketing & Communications (Business & Comm., Media, and Design)
- Business & Gaming (Business & Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences)
- Computational Business Analytics (Business Analytics & Computer Sciences)
- Quantitative Business Analytics (Business Analytics & Mathematics)
- Business Analytic & Web Technologies (Business Analytics & ITWS)|
- Quantitative Business Economics (Business Analytics & Economics)
- Industrial & Management Analytics (Business Analytics & Industrial & Management Engineering)
Note: Additional dual majors not formally listed in the catalogue may still be available to students to pursue. Students interested in pursuing a dual major not listed above should contact the Lally School of Management Director of Undergraduate Programs for more information.
Lally’s Information Technology and Web Science (ITWS) program further provides concentrations, including in Finance, MIS, and Technological Entrepreneurship.
Graduate Programs
Graduate degrees offered include:
Accreditation
The Lally School of Management is accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB International), the premier accrediting body for business degree programs worldwide. Fewer than 6% of business schools worldwide are accredited by AACSB.
Research Innovations and Initiatives
Research at Lally is characterized by its cross-disciplinary, multiplatform, and international nature. While the issues researched cut across functional areas in a business setting and involve a variety of academic disciplines, the objective is to produce rigorously developed studies that are at the frontiers of new management knowledge and that pass the stringent tests of academic peer review.
Research conducted by Lally scholars and students is often featured at conferences sponsored by the Academy of Management, INFORMS, PICMET, Academy of International Business, the IEEE, and ASSA. In addition, Lally regularly sponsors international conferences, competitions, and seminars designed to bring together the best academics and students globally to focus on management, entrepreneurship, and emerging areas of new research in order to establish thought leadership and innovation in a domain of broad interest to the business community. Lally also spearheads the Center for Research Toward Advancing Financial Technologies (CRAFT), the first ever National Science Foundation (NSF) center devoted to Financial Technologies and Cyber Research, as well as other centers in finance, supply chain analytics, and ethics of emerging technologies.
Lally has four intersecting research categories that are recognized for their leadership position in the academic community. They seek to establish new frontiers of managerial and policy thought:
Finance
This field of scholarship and practice combines the traditionally distinct disciplines of finance, risk management, advanced technology, and modeling. Formed within this field are three relatively distinct applications. The first application is the impact of technology on the financial management of corporations, financial institutions and markets. This area specifically focuses on the interface between technological shifts and practices in the financial services industry and the overall functioning and productivity of these institutions in the capital markets. The second application pertains to the alternative financing and exit strategies of new technological ventures and business initiatives. This area focuses on the economics and governance of private equity, venture capital funds, traditional bank debts and the process of initial public offerings of individual companies along with the financial implications for regulatory, macroeconomic, and firm-specific influences on respective industries and markets. Another research specialty in computational accounting and finance involving emerging financial products and derivatives.
Innovation Management and New Product Development
In this area, researchers concentrate on understanding the management processes leading to the development of successful new products, technologies, and/or services. Research topics include managing technological innovation, technology strategy, new product development, distributed innovation, strategic innovation alliances, innovation networks, management of disruptive innovation, and intellectual property management. Related research focuses on organizational strategies to successfully pursue product or service innovation, including those that occur within the boundaries of the organization as well as those that involve other organizations. Given the emergence of global networks of innovation, issues related to inter-organizational alliances and collaboration form a primary focus of research at Lally.
Management Information Systems
This area focuses on the role and use of information technology in organizations and how it transforms the theories and practice of management. The research incorporates theories and concepts from such fields as computer science, economics, psychology, communications, and organization theory. Of particular interest are topics that relate to supply-chain management, business and consumer marketing, virtual collaboration, distributed innovation, and internal organizational capabilities. Lally adopts an interdisciplinary approach to researching new business models and the issues that present challenges and opportunities for managers, entrepreneurs, financiers, marketers, and innovators.
Technological Entrepreneurship
At RPI, technological entrepreneurship is the process of translating technical ideas into new businesses in startup ventures and established firms. This is the primary research focus for numerous faculty engaged in collaborative, multidisciplinary projects. These faculty members examine technological entrepreneurship from many perspectives, including psychology, economics, and sociology. They focus on problems such as opportunity identification, accelerating new-venture creation, intellectual property and governance in high-technology startups, and managing hyper-growth firms. The Severino Center for Technological Entrepreneurship is the focal point for scholarship in entrepreneurship and serves as a bridge to the Rensselaer entrepreneurial ecosystem and Rensselaer Technology Park.
Troy Campus Faculty*
Professors
Edirisinghe, C.— Ph.D. (University of British Columbia); Quantitative finance, management science, and operations research.
Francis, B.B.— Ph.D. (University of Toronto; Corporate and international finance. (Bruggeman Chair)
Golden, T.— Ph.D. (University of Connecticut); Organizational behavior and human resource management.
Gupta, A.— Ph.D. (Stanford University); Quantitative finance, risk management, financial decision support, optimization, and simulation.
Kumar, S.— Ph.D. (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign); Joint ventures and alliances, diversification, theories of the firm.
McDermott, C.— Ph.D. (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill); Manufacturing strategy and operations management.
Nevo, D.— Ph.D. (University of British Columbia); Management information systems, and quantitative methods.
Ravichandran, T.— Ph.D. (Southern Illinois University, Carbondale); Management information systems. (Bozzone Chair)
Wagman, L. - Ph.D. (Duke University); Information economics, industrial organization, law and economics, and entrepreneurship. (Dean)
Associate Professors
Clark, B.— Ph.D. (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute); Banking, corporate finance, operational risk, risk management, and stress testing.
Chari, M.— Ph.D. (Temple University); Strategy and international business.
Garcia, R.— Ph.D. (Brandeis University); Financial economics, corporate finance, and empirical industrial organization.
Hekimoglu, H.— Ph.D. (Syracuse University); Supply chain management and business analytics.
Jain, G.— Ph.D. (University of Iowa); Marketing, information systems, and operations management.
Kuruzovich, J.— Ph.D. (University of Maryland); Information systems, social media, and entrepreneurship.
Langer, N.— Ph.D. (Carnegie Mellon University); Information systems.
Maharjan, J.— Ph.D. (Washington University); Corporate finance and corporate governance.
Nevo, S. – Ph.D. (York University); Information Systems, Organizational Behavior.
Assistant Professors
Agarwal, A. – Ph.D. (University of Houston); Consumer behavior, marketing strategy, and digital analytics.
Chen, K. – Ph.D. (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities); Supply network, innovation management, and risk management.
Du, J. – Ph.D. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology); Marketing analytics, digital platforms, and pricing strategy.
Manikonda, L – Ph.D. (Arizona State University); Information Systems, Modeling Online User Interactions, Privacy, Ethics, and Intelligent Systems
Ruan, Y. – Ph.D. (Texas A&M University); Asset pricing, market microstructure, and empirical finance.
Singh, T. – Ph.D. (Concordia University); Ethics in emerging technologies, marketing, AI, and decision making.
Souyris, S. – Ph.D. (University of Texas, Austin); Information, risk, and operations management.
Strizver, S. – Ph.D. (University of South Carolina); Organizational behavior, leadership development, and team dynamics.
Tran, M. K. – Ph.D. (Syracuse University); Management, entrepreneurship, and innovation ecosystems.
Yu, Y. – Ph.D. (University at Buffalo); Financial intermediation, regulation, and corporate finance.
Professors of Practice
Fletcher, K. – Ph.D. (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute); Change management, organizational theory, and environmental management.
Plotka, R.—B.S. (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute); web development, web science, data science, IT strategy, IT management, algorithms, real-time applications, applications design and development, systems design and development (Information Technology and Web Science).
Senior Lecturers
Fontaine, K. - Ph.D. (Walden University); data policy and ethics; public administration; data and technology management; informatics; program management (Information Technology and Web Science) (Program Manager, AIRC).
McDermott, M.— Ph.D. (University at Albany); Strategic management.
Lecturers
Eleish, A. - Ph.D. (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute); data science, data analytics, xinformatics, web systems, multidisciplinary science (information technology and web science).
Hasan, T. - PhD. (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute); Financial accounting, corporate social responsibility, and machine learning.
McKinney, J. – MBA (SUNY Albany); Strategic management.
Professors Emeritus
Begley, T.—Ph.D. (Cornell University); Organizational change, cross-cultural management, global issues in human resource management.
Judd, G. – Ph.D. (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute); Metallurgical engineering.
*Departmental faculty listings are accurate as of the date generated for inclusion in this catalog. For the most up-to-date listing of faculty positions, including end-of-year promotions, please refer to the Faculty Roster section of this catalog.
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