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Prabhudev Konana: This is my way of life!

Thanks for visiting my website. Since January 1, 2021 I am the Dean of Robert H. Smith School of Business, The University of Maryland, College Park. I never thought in my wildest dream that I would get a PhD, become a tenure endowed professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and now become dean of a prestigious business school. Life takes different turns - some because circumstances force you (like joining a PhD program) and some because opportunities knock on your doors. There are so many people I am thankful for what I am. Nothing has come to me without a struggle and nothing is given to me because I wanted it. I had to overcome self doubt, skepticism, and preferences. Yet, somethings have remained constant - love for teaching, my students, alums, mentors, and to do good for people who want to uplift themselves. Previous to joining University of Maryland, I was the  Associate Dean of Instructional Innovation, Thomas O. Hicks Endowed Chair in Business, William H. Seay Centennial Professor of IM, past Chairman of the Department of Information, Risk, and Operations Management in the McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin.  I received my PhD and an MBA from the University of Arizona, Tucson in 1995 and 1991, respectively.  I have an undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Surathkal, India.

My profession

I love research and teaching. There is a joy in teaching and watching young minds flourish to their greatest potential. While I am not teaching as a dean, I am fortunate to be a faculty at Maryland Smith; not everyone gets this profound role in society. I will soon get back to teaching.

 

I enjoy doing research related to analyzing the value of social networks, sentiment extraction from news, global sourcing, and business value of IT. The paper I co-authored on Competition among Virtual Communities and User Valuation received the best paper award from the prestigious Information Systems Research journal. My research has been supported by numerous research grants. I was the first McCombs faculty to receive National Science Foundation CAREER Award. 

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I take pride in my numerous teaching awards. I am fortunate to receive the University of Texas Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award in 2011 and being inducted into UT’s Academy of Distinguished Teachers in 2003. More recently, the 2011 and 2012 graduating classes of MBA-Dallas Program selected me as the most outstanding professor.  I won the Fawn & Vijay Mahajan Teaching Award for Executive Education. Since 2007, I have been consistently selected every spring semester to the Faculty Honor Roll by the Undergraduate Business School.  

"Irrespective of the path you take, there are no shortcuts to success.  And, there is no straight path to success either; in fact, the path is very bumpy! You will have to overcome hurdles, challenges, disappointments, rejection, failures, and other things that will make you angry, upset, and dejected.  Success is about dealing with all these challenges effectively. " 
--   Prabhudev Konana

Articles in popular media

I enjoy writing on social and political issues to popular English Daily in India.  These are some of the articles:

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Past Teaching

I taught a popular elective in the full time and working professional MBA programs at McCombs. I also taught the first Business Honors Program class on Information Technology Management. Last, I also taught the database management class in the MS-Business Analytics program.

MBA: STRATEGIES FOR NETWORKED ECONOMY

Emerging technologies (e.g., cloud services, payment networks, Internet-of-Things, 3D printing, autonomous cars, Blockchain, NFC, machine learning/AI/Deep learning, etc) and platform-mediated networks (e.g. Mastercard, Google, Apple, eBay, Facebook, gaming networks, Amazon, Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Homeaway, etc) are mushrooming globally connecting millions of different entities.  There are numerous opportunities and challenges for both producers and users from these IT innovations.  This class explores the competitive dynamics of IT evolution and platform-mediated networks and how they create value or creatively destroy value (e.g., Blockbuster, Borders, Kodak). This is an interdisciplinary class that integrates concepts and principles from different areas and complements other classes from strategy, marketing, computer science, and finance.

BBA (HONORS): INTRODUCTION TO INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT

This class is similar to the MBA class, but also focuses on lots of technology skills in Excel modeling, visualization, data minings, and decision tools.

MS-BUSINESS ANALYTICS: DATABASE MANAGEMENT & DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING

Fundamental to any analytics initiative is the data stored in database management systems. It is often said 70-80% of the time in doing analytics goes towards cleaning, transforming, extracting, and processing data. This class is designed for business analytics students to explore various concepts of data management and develop expertise in data querying and processing. The following are some learning outcomes of this course:

  1. Understand different types of data models

  2. Develop skills to model organizational data using Entity-Relationship models using modeling tools

  3. Analyze functional dependencies and normalization, and design Relational databases

  4. Gain expertise in data definition and data manipulation using Structured Query Language (SQL)

  5. Understand concepts behind building data warehouse and big data

  6. Gain working knowledge in Big Data storage processing (Map Reduce, Hadoop, Spark)

  7. Understand Big Data ecosystem and analytics

RESEARCH AWARDS

  1. National Science Foundation CAREER Award, 1999-2003 (first McCombs faculty to receive this award)  ($295,438)

  2. NSF Information Technology Research grant ($339,991), 2002-2007 (with S. Balasubramanian)

  3. McCombs School of Business research grant ($5,000), 2017

  4. McCombs School of Business research grant ($15,000), 2016

  5. Research Excellence Grant, McCombs School of Business, 2007-08 ($11,500) and CIBER Travel grant of $1,500

  6. Research Excellence Grant, McCombs School of Business, 2006 ($15,000) (with G. Ray and B. Gu)

  7. University Small Research Grant, 2003 ($6,000)

  8. Intel Equipment Grant ($31,299) 2002.

  9. LARIAT grant from Dell Corporation ($50,000 + matching school funds of $50,000) 1999-2000. 

  10. Best Paper in the Information Systems Research journal for 2007 for the paper “Competition among Virtual Communities and User Valuation: The Case of Investor Communities.”

  11. Best Paper Nomination, Conference on Information Systems and Technology, Phoenix, October 13-14.

  12. Best Paper Runner-up award at the Seventeenth Annual International Conference on Information Systems, December 15-18, 1996, Cleveland, OH.

  13. William H. Seay Centennial Professor of Business, 2008 - present

  14. CBA Advisory Council Foundation Centennial Fellow, 2004 - 2007

  15. CBA Foundation Research Award for Assistant Professors, 2001.

TEACHING AWARDS

  1. Fawn & Vijay Mahajan Teaching Award for Executive Education, 2017

  2. Favorite MBA course from graduating MBA student, Poets & Quants, 2017 Best MBAs.

  3. Top Professor for UG Teaching, Poets & Quants for Undergrads, 2016

  4. Elected to Undergraduate Faculty Honor Roll, Spring 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017 (voted by students through the Undergraduate Business Council)

  5. Nominated for Civitatis Award by the department that recognizes outstanding faculty citizenship, 2015, 2016.

  6. Elected to Graduate (MBA) Faculty Honor Roll, 2001, 2004, 2005, Summer 2013, Fall 2013, 2014, 2017 (Graduate Business Council & the Dallas-MBA program)

  7. UT Systems Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award, University of Texas System 2011 (highest teaching recognition given by the Regents)

  8. Finalist, Friar Society award for teaching excellence, 2014

  9. Semifinalist, Friar Society Centennial Teaching Fellowship, 2015

  10. Most Outstanding Professor, MBA (Dallas) Program, 2012

  11. Most Outstanding Professor, MBA (Dallas) Program, 2011

  12. Inducted to the Academy of Distinguished Teachers, The University of Texas at Austin, in 2003 (Highest teaching recognition at the University)

  13. “Professor of the Month” awarded by the Senate of College Councils, The University of Texas at Austin, October, 2010

  14. Hank and Mary Harkin Foundation Award for Effective Teaching in Undergraduate Education, McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin, 2008

  15. El Paso Energy Foundation Faculty Award – recognition of outstanding teaching in IT, Engineering and Accounting/Finance, 2002 (State-wide award)

  16. Trammell/CBA Foundation Teaching Award for Assistant Professors 2000.

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MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENTS 

  • Founded MS-Business Analytics (MSBA) in 2012. Currently ranked #3. Received significant support from Walmart and Deloitte.

  • Responsible for MS-Information Technology & Management. A unique MS program built on Internet of Things, mobile and AI-based systems.

Education

NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, SURATHKAL

1978-1983
(CHEMICAL ENGINEERING)

UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA, TUCSON

1989-1991 (MBA)
1991-1995 (PHD)

Recent Journal Publications

  1. B. Gu, P. Konana, B. Rajagopalan, and M. Chen. Competition among Virtual Communities and User Valuation: The Case of Investor Communities. Information Systems Research, Vol. 18, No. 1, March 2007, pp. 68–85. (Best paper award for 2007 for the journal)

  2. P. Konana and G. Ray. Physical Product Re-engineering using Embedded Information Technology. Communications of the ACM, Vol. 50, No. 10, October 2007, pp 72 – 78.

  3. H. Tanriverdi, P. Konana, and L. Ge,. The Choice of Sourcing Mechanism for Business Processes. Information Systems Research. Vol. 18, No. 3, September 2007, pp 280 – 299.

  4. C. G. Lee, A. K. Mok, and P. Konana. Online Timing Correlation of Streaming Data with Uncertain Timestamps, IEICE Transactions on Information and Systems, Vol E92-D, No. 6, June 2009, pp 1260-1267.

  5. G. Ray, D. Wu, and P. Konana. Competitive Environment and the Impact of IT on Vertical Integration. Information Systems Research, Vol. 20, No. 4, December 2009, pp 585-603.

  6. J. Park, B. Gu and P. Konana, The Impact of External Word-Of-Mouth Sources on Retailer Sales for High Involvement Product, Information Systems Research, March 2012 vol. 23 no. 1 182-196.

  7. B. Gu, P. Konana, and M. Chen, Measuring Product Competition in Online Retailers from Revealed Preferences of Online Recommendation Networks, Decision Support Systems, Volume 53, Issue 3, June 2012, Pages 625–633

  8. J. Park, P. Konana, B. Gu, A. Kumar, and R. Raghunathan, Confirmation Bias, Overconfidence, and Investment Performance: Evidence from Stock Message Boards, Information Systems Research Vol. 24, no. 4, December 2013, pp 1050-1067

  9. B. Gu, P. Konana, R. Raghunathan, and M. Chen, The Allure of Homohily: Evidence from Investor Responses on Virtual Communities, Research Note, Information Systems Research Vol. 25, no. 3, Sept 25, 2014, pp 604-617.

  10. J. Park, B. Gu, P. Konana and A. Leung. An Investigation of Information Seeking and Sharing Behaviors in Virtual Communities. Computers and Human Behavior, 31, pp. 1-12, 2014

  11. A. Leung, A. Agarwal, P. Konana and A. Kumar. Network Analysis of Search Dynamics: The Case of Stock Habitats. Management Science. (Vol. 63, No. 8, August 2017, pp. 2667-2687.

  12. A. Agarwal, A. Leung, P. Konana and A. Kumar, “Co-search Attention and Stock Return Predictability in Supply-Chains”, Information Systems Research, Vol 28., No. 2, June 2017, pp 265-288.

  13. C. Ho, P. Damien, B. Gu and P. Konana (2017) The Time Varying Nature of Social Media Sentiments in Modeling Stock Returns? Decision Support System, Vol 101 Sept 2017, pp 69-81.

The above publication list is not exhaustive.

Teaching Evaluations at McCombs

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MIS301H

SPRING 2018 -- 4.8/5.0
SPRING 2017 -- 4.9/5.0
SPRING 2016 -- 5.0/5.0
SPRING 2015 -- 4.9/5.0
SPRING 2014 -- 4.7/5.0

MBA

SPRING 2018 - 5.0/5.0
SPRING 2017 -- 4.9/5.0
FALL 2014 -- 4.9/5.0
FALL 2013 -- 4.8/5.0

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My Father's Life in 12 minutes

MY LIFE CONTINUES....

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Personal

Somethings that I am glad to be part of...

PRAGATHI

Co-founded an NGO to support primary education in India

HOSTEL (DORM)

Family built a dorm next to the school to accommodate about 40 children in the village where my father studied in late 1920s and early 1930s. My great grandmother donated this land for the school.

MY FAMILY

They are my heart and soul!

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