Ph.D. Program in Information Systems & Operations ManagementUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The Ph.D. program for Information Systems and Operations Management (IS & OM) areas is designed to train doctoral students to be scholars in leading business schools engaged in rigorous research and teaching. The diverse interests of our faculty members and the proximity to premier engineering and science programs, coupled with the fundamentally interdisciplinary nature of inquiries in IS & OM, provide almost infinite opportunities for students in the Ph.D. program to engage in a variety of research topics while interacting with leading scholars in IS, OM, and related disciplines. Many of our faculty members engage in the newly emerging research areas of business analytics, healthcare, machine learning, software development, mobile computing, crypto-currencies, social problems, etc. Our faculty work closely with the Ph.D. students to help them evolve into high-quality researchers. Students receive extensive training on theories and methodologies that are essential to work on modeling-based and data-intensive problems in operations management and information systems. Our Ph.D. program offers full tuition, full medical insurance coverage, computing and travel support, and a generous stipend during the full program of study. Ph.D. students of IS & OM come from various academic and professional backgrounds including computer science, economics, engineering, mathematics, physics, etc. The IS & OM program resides in the Information, Operations, Supply Chain, and Analytics (IOSA) area of the Department of Business Administration at Gies College of Business. Consistent with the goals of the Department’s Ph.D. program, a majority of the graduates choose to pursue academic careers— as much as 97% of graduates since 2005 entered academia. Several of the Department’s graduates find positions at leading business schools and universities in the United States and around the world.
Why Illinois?The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a world-renowned university that has made innumerable contributions to the field of Science and Technology for more than one-and-a-half centuries. The Gies College of Business has been furthering this tradition in the fields of business and commerce for more than a century now. Given our legacy of making innovations that have changed the world, it is the perfect place to conduct research in the areas of Operations Management and Information Systems – disciplines that are closely related to Science and Technology. The university is home to “Research Park” where more than fifty Fortune 500 companies have located their Research and Development offices. The Research Park provides an exceptional opportunity for our researchers to work closely with large organizations on their most pressing problems. Besides, we are within a three-hour driving distance from three metropolitans namely, Chicago, Indianapolis, and St. Louis, which provides additional opportunities for researchers to develop ties with industries and working on real-life problems. The Champaign-Urbana metropolitan area offers a diverse collection of rich experiences for its residents. Information Systems AreaThe area of Information systems is dedicated to the development and management of information systems technologies, as well as their use and impact on organizations and societies. Information systems serve as the backbones of modern organizations, and interest in this discipline is steadily growing in academia and practice. Given the dynamic nature of this field, new research problems continuously emerge. Lately, the abundance of data and availability of computational abilities have made possible the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence for designing smart systems and sophisticated technologies. These systems change how organizations and societies operate in ways that were unthinkable a decade ago. Information systems is an interdisciplinary area that borrows theories and methodologies largely from Economics, Econometrics and Statistics, Operations Research, Psychology, Organizational Behavior, and Computer Science for solving exciting research problems and suggesting new business models. Operations Management AreaOperations Management (OM) focuses on designing and managing value-added processes across various organizations involved in supplying goods or providing services to meet end consumer needs. In particular, OM focuses on achieving competitive advantage through efficient decision-making about sourcing, production, distribution of goods and services. OM researchers analyze issues for a variety of industries such as retail, healthcare, financial services, logistics, nonprofit and public sectors. Emerging trends in OM are to explore implications of sustainability, shared economy, e-commerce, blockchain, social networks on managing the supply chain and operations of various firms. OM uses methodologies from Operations Research, Economics, Econometrics, Statistics, Machine Learning, and Applied Probability for analyzing interesting and practically relevant research problems that help efficient decision making. Application for AdmissionPlease visit https://go.gies.illinois.edu/ba-admissions for detailed information.
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