Faculty Directory

The Graduate School of Management at UC Davis brings together distinguished scholars and industry experts from all over the world. Alongside our students, they create a vibrant educational experience with real-world relevance and a culture of camaraderie. 

Our instructors have both academic expertise and practical experience, giving you a well-rounded and relevant MBA education. Plus, with a low student-to-faculty ratio, these diverse, high-quality faculty get to know you by first name and serve as mentors as you grow your professional network after graduation.

They've trained at top schools, including Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Carnegie Mellon University, Harvard University, The University of Chicago, Cornell University and Northwestern University.

Through a powerful combination of case studies, seminars, guest speakers, simulations and team projects, they turn complex concepts into actionable tools you can use throughout your career.

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Mak Ahmad

Mak Ahmad

Lecturer

Ph.D., Computer Science, UC Davis, In Progress
Master of Science (M.S.), Computer Science, Sonoma State University, 2017
Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Computer and Electrical Engineering, UC Davis, 2004

Research Expertise
Visualization and Human-Computer Interaction

Areas of Expertise
Technology Management

Ed Arnheiter

Ed Arnheiter

Lecturer

Ph.D., Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 1997
M.S., Engineering Management, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 1994
B.S., Mechanical Engineering, Union College (NY), 1983

Research Expertise
Manufacturing, Lean Six Sigma, Quality Control, Continuous Improvement

Areas of Expertise
Business Analytics, Operations Management, Statistics

(860) 466-0676

Portrait of Sharad Gupta

Sharad Gupta

Lecturer

Master of Business Administration (MBA), UC Davis Graduate School of Management

Sharad Gupta is an executive leader with large-scale strategy and execution background in driving modern data and analytics and technology transformations in the healthcare industry. He is a tech-savvy leader and is an industry-recognized thought-leader with focus on applying data science, artificial intelligence/machine learning, data science, digital technologies, and modern architectures for business growth and transformations.

Andrea Haviley

Andrea Haviley

Lecturer

Master of Business Administration (MBA), UC Davis Graduate School of Management, 2008
Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Business Administration with Concentration in Accounting, California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo, 1993

Committed to focusing on disruptive innovation to improve the human condition and a future that people and nature can thrive together, Andrea Haviley is a successful financial executive in Silicon Valley for 25 years as a key contributor at growth companies with strong forward-thinking missions.

Eric Liederman

Eric Liederman

Lecturer

M.D., Medicine, Tufts University School of Medicine, 1989
M.P.H, Health Policy and Management, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 1996
B.A., Classical Archaeology, Dartmouth College, 1984

Research Expertise
Health Economics, Clinical Informatics, Medical Operations, Privacy and Security, Patient messaging

Areas of Expertise
Business Analytics, Management & Organizations, Technology Management

(510) 368-4319

Headshot of Pantelis Loupos

Pantelis Loupos

Assistant Professor

Ph.D., Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

Research Expertise 
Social Customer Relationship Management, Digital Platforms, Business Analytics 

Pantelis Loupos' research interests focus on understanding consumer behavior in digital platforms and in particular networked services. In particular, services whose value is a function of the number of customers they have and their underlying network topology.

(530) 752-7662

540 Alumni Lane 3214 Gallagher Hall Davis, CA 95616

Headshot of Guru Pundoor

Guru Pundoor

Lecturer

Ph.D., Management Science, R.H. Smith School of Business (2005), University of Maryland, College Park
Master of Science (M.S.), Systems Engineering, Institute for Systems Research (2002), University of Maryland, College Park
Bachelor of Technology, Mechanical Engineering (2000), Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India

Huy Tran

Huy Tran

Lecturer

Master of Business Administration (MBA), UC Davis Graduate School of Management

Huy Tran brings over 15 years of public and private sector experience in technology leadership, business transformation, continuous improvement, project management and data analytics. He has a career that spans higher education, healthcare and, most recently, Fortune 500 Technology.

Professor Chih-Ling portrait photo

Chih-Ling Tsai

Distinguished Professor of Management (Emeritus)

Ph.D., University of Minnesota

Research Expertise 
Regression analysis, model selection, high-dimensional data, time series, biostatistics, application of statistics in business.

Teaching Field 
Statistics

Professor Chih-Ling Tsai is a recognized expert in the practical application of statistics in business, including regression analysis, model selection, high-dimensional data, time series and biostatistics. He has had more than 100 research papers published in academic journals relating to statistics, marketing, finance and biostatistics. He teaches courses on forecasting and managerial research methods, and time series analysis and forecasting.

Tsai earned a Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Minnesota and an Master of Science (M.S.) in mathematics from the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle. He earned his Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in mathematics from Tamkang University.

Awards

David Woodruff

David Woodruff

Distinguished Professor, Associate Dean for Faculty and Research

Ph.D., Northwestern University

Research Expertise 
Business analytics, operations and management science, planning and scheduling under uncertainty, optimization

Distinguished Professor David Woodruff's research concerns computational aspects of optimal decision making. He is particularly interested in problems with a mix of discrete and continuous choices with multiple time stages when there is significant uncertainty. His research includes solution algorithms, problem representation and modeling language support. He has worked on applications in operations, logistics, science, and has been involved recently in a number of applications in electrical energy planning and scheduling.

He is one of the developers of Pyomo, (www.pyomo.org) that won the INFORMS Computing Society prize in 2019 and an R&D 100 award in 2016.

From 2013 to 2019 he was editor-in-chief of the INFORMS Journal on Computing, which is a publication of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science. His paper with Jean-Paul Watson titled “Progressive Hedging Innovations for a Class of Stochastic Mixed-integer Resource Allocation Problems” shared the best paper of 2011 award in the journal Computational Management Science. He was the UC Davis principal investigator for the ARPAe (Department of Energy) grant Improved Power System Operation Using Advanced Stochastic Optimization awarded in 2012. He is presently principal investigator for additional Department of Energy funded research on grid planning in the presence of uncertainty due to renewables.

Woodruff teaches the core course Data Analysis for Managers. He sometimes teaches Managing for Operational Excellence and the Management Science course.

Woodruff earned his Ph.D. in industrial engineering and management sciences from Northwestern University. He received both his Master of Science (M.S.) and Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in industrial engineering and engineering management from Stanford University.

He was appointed associate dean of academic affairs on July 1, 2023.

Awards

  • 2019 INFORMS Computing Society Prize for Pyomo Annual award for the best English language paper or group of related papers dealing with the Operations Research/Computer Science interface
  • Research Grant, Department of Energy Green Electricity Networks, "Improved Power System Operations Using Advanced Stochastic Optimization," Co-Principal Investigator, 2012-14.
  • Electives Courses Teacher of the Year, UC Davis Graduate School of Management, 1994-95, 1996-97, 2000, 2001.  
  • Research Grant, National Science Foundation, "Identification of Outliers in Multivariate Data," 1996.
  • Dissertation Competition Runner-up, Production and Operations Management Society (POMS), 1991.
  • JD Scaife Award, Institution of Manufacturing Engineers, “CONWIP: A Pull Alternative to Kanban,” 1990.
  • Doctoral Colloquium, Operations Research Society of America, 1988.

(530) 752-0515

540 Alumni Lane 3416 Gallagher Hall Davis, CA 95616

Catherine Yang

Catherine Yang

Professor

Ph.D. Operations and Information Management, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, 2004
Master of Arts (M.A.), Operations and Information Management, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, 2001
Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.), Management Information Systems, School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, 1998

Research Expertise
Business analytics, big data analytics, predictive modeling, artificial intelligence and machine learning

Professor Yinghui (Catherine) Yang focuses her research on business intelligence, big data, machine learning, data mining methods for business applications, online shopping patterns analysis, user profiling, etc. Her research has been published in top-tier journals in Information Systems, Marketing and Computer Science, including Information Systems Research, Marketing Science, INFORMS Journal on Computing, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering and ACM Transactions on Database Systems.

(530) 754-5967

540 Alumni Lane 3418 Gallagher Hall Davis, CA 95616