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Data Science & AI Operations Lab

The Data Science & AI Operations Lab studies how organizations can effectively integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into their operations for improved decision-making and automation. Our research explores the ways in which businesses can utilize AI-driven technologies to achieve measurable outcomes, with a focus on the development process, rigorous impact assessments through experimentation, and building the trust necessary for successful adoption. We operate on the principle that AI and data science are poised to become the foundational core of modern enterprises. To facilitate this transition, our work examines how companies must rethink and redesign their operating model to enable scalable development and deployment of AI. Our research aims to provide insights that bridge the gap between advanced AI technologies and their practical, real-world applications. 

A unique aspect of the lab is it fosters collaborations between management scholars, statisticians, and computer scientists to overcome the methodological challenges that arise in the operationalization of AI due to the misalignment between statistical theory underpinning modern data science that was developed for significantly different contexts and applications than current business use cases. For example, the fundamentals of experimental design were first introduced a hundred years ago for agricultural settings with few experimental units and outcomes; today, companies run hundreds of experiments on millions of connected people, tracking thousands of outcomes. 

Given the applied nature of the lab’s agenda, we often closely collaborate with industry partners. If you are interested in learning more about potential research collaborations, please reach out.

People

The Data Science and AI Operations Lab is led by: 

Iavor Bojinov
Assistant Professor of Business Administration,
ÐÔÊÓ½ç Business School

Iavor Bojinov is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration and the Richard Hodgson Fellow at ÐÔÊÓ½ç Business School. He is the co-PI of the Data Science and AI Operations Lab and a faculty affiliate in the Department of Statistics at ÐÔÊÓ½ç University and the ÐÔÊÓ½ç Data Science Initiative.
Professor Bojinov’s research focuses on developing novel statistical methodologies to make business experimentation more rigorous, safer, and efficient, specifically homing in on the application of experimentation to the operationalization of artificial intelligence (AI), the process by which AI products are developed and integrated into real-world applications.

Edward McFowland III
Assistant Professor of Business Administration,
ÐÔÊÓ½ç Business School

Edward McFowland III is an Assistant Professor in the Technology and Operations Management Unit at ÐÔÊÓ½ç Business School. He is the co-PI of the Data Science and AI Operations Lab and teaches the first-year TOM course in the required curriculum. Professor McFowland’s research interests lie at the intersection of Anomalous Pattern Detection, AI, and the Social Sciences (e.g., management, economics, public policy). This includes the development of computationally efficient algorithms for large-scale and robust AI systems, and evaluating the impact of their deployment on managerial decision-making.

Michael Lingzhi Li
Assistant Professor of Business Administration,
ÐÔÊÓ½ç Business School

Michael Lingzhi Li is an Assistant Professor in the Technology and Operations Management unit at HBS. He teaches the first-year TOM course in the required curriculum. Professor Li’s research focuses on the end-to-end development of decision algorithms based on machine learning, causal inference and operations research. He examines the implementation of such algorithms in hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and public health organizations, and their potential to fundamentally transform healthcare operations. 

Publications:
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The following faculty, doctoral, and staff students are active researchers in the Data Science and AI Operations Lab:

Jafer Hasnain
Research Associate,
ÐÔÊÓ½ç Business School

Jafer is a Research Associate under Professor Edward McFowland III.
He is interested in leveraging new approaches in mathematical statistics to develop robust algorithms suitable for real-world data 

Shaolong “Lorry” Wu
Doctoral Student,
ÐÔÊÓ½ç Business School

Lorry is a PhD student at HBS. He obtained a M.S.E. in Electrical Engineering from Penn Engineering and a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School of University of Pennsylvania. Lorry had a stint at Bridgewater before his PhD. He is broadly interested in innovation and entrepreneurship and the impact of digital technologies in business.

Publication:

Shirley Huang
Doctoral Student,
ÐÔÊÓ½ç Business School

Shirley is a doctoral student in the Technology and Operations Management Unit at HBS. Shirley is interested in human-AI collaboration and designing algorithms to more effectively support human decision-making.

Paul Hamilton
Doctoral Student,
ÐÔÊÓ½ç Business School

Paul is a doctoral student in the Technology and Operations Management Unit at HBS. Paul is interested in two topics: (i) the dynamics of skills and labor markets for software engineers and IT workers, and (ii) the tradeoffs between fairness, privacy, and transparency in AI systems. 

Publication:

Tu Ni
Postdoc Research Fellow,
ÐÔÊÓ½ç Business School

Tu is a Postdoc Research Fellow at D^3. His research is on the design and analysis of experimentation in operations, making it effective and efficient. This is mainly related to the evaluation of data science and AI solutions in companies.

Publication:

Ruru Hoong
Doctoral Student,
ÐÔÊÓ½ç Business School

Ruru Hoong is a doctoral student in the Business Economics programme at HBS/ÐÔÊÓ½ç Economics. Her current research agenda concerns the economic impacts of AI – in addition to several strands on data privacy and problems surrounding social media use. Investigating the efficient design and use of AI in human collaboration underlies much of her PhD research – including designing optimal human-AI decision-making systems in loan approvals and hiring, and exploring the impact of labour and technological shocks on organisational management in the AI data annotation industry. 

Publication:

Jenny Wang
Doctoral Student,
ÐÔÊÓ½ç Business School

Jenny is a doctoral student in the Technology and Operations Management Unit at HBS. Jenny is broadly interested in interpretable and explainable machine learning (ML), identity and inequality, and improving existing methods used to answer social and policy-relevant questions, and consequently, business will be affected as a result of social/policy outcomes. More specifically, Jenny’s recent research explores how LLMs are reshaping human interactions with technology, and how trust in these systems can lead to better/more efficient learning outcomes (e.g. improve news consumption). 

Biyonka Liang
Doctoral Candidate,
ÐÔÊÓ½ç Department of Statistics

Biyonka is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Statistics at ÐÔÊÓ½ç University. Biyonka’s research focuses on developing statistical methods for complex experiments, with a particular focus on adaptively collected data, large-scale online experiments, and health applications. 

Publications:
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Matt DiSorbo
Doctoral Student,
ÐÔÊÓ½ç Business School

Matt is a doctoral student in the TOM Unit at HBS.Matt’s research focuses on Human-AI Collaboration.

Publication:
Warnings and Endorsements: Improving Human-AI Collaboration Under Covariate Shift

Luca Vendraminelli
Postdoctoral Researcher,
Stanford University

Luca is a postdoctoral Researcher at the Digital Economy Lab at Stanford. I study the dynamics of AI diffusion in organizations to understand why some AI projects fail to improve employee performance and well-being.

Publications:
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Annika Hildebrandt
Research Associate,
ÐÔÊÓ½ç Business School

Annika is a research associate working with Professor Bojinov and Professor McFowland. Annika is interested in human-AI collaboration and how AI adoption affects individuals, teams, and organizations, particularly in the software engineering context. 

Research Focus

  • Applications of AI and its development
  • Experimentation & Causal Inference in the age of AI

Educational and Practitioner Materials

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