Michael Smith

Michael D. Smith is the J. Erik Jonsson Professor of Information Technology and Marketing and the Co-Director of IDEA, the Initiative for Digital Entertainment Analytics at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College. He received a Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering (summa cum laude) and a Masters of Science in Telecommunications Science from the University of Maryland, and received a Ph.D. in Management Science from the Sloan School of Management at MIT.

Professor Smith’s research uses economic and statistical techniques to analyze firm and consumer behavior in online markets — specifically markets for digital information and digital media products. His research in this area has been published in leading Management Science, Economics, and Marketing journals and in leading professional journals including The Harvard Business Review and The Sloan Management Review. His research has also been covered by press outlets including The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Wired and Business Week.

Professor Smith has received several awards for his teaching and research including the National Science Foundation’s prestigious CAREER Research Award, the 2017 Carol & Bruce Mallen Award for lifetime published scholarly contributions to Motion Picture industry economic studies, the 2009 and 2004 Best Teacher Awards in Carnegie Mellon’s Masters of Information Systems Management program, and the 2018 Dick Wittink Award for the best paper published in the journal Quantitative Marketing and Economics. He was also recently selected as one of the top 100 “emerging engineering leaders in the United States” by the National Academy of Engineering. Professor Smith has served on the editorial boards of a variety of top journals including as a Senior Editor at Information Systems Research and as an Associate Editor at Management Science and Management Information Systems Quarterly.

Prior to receiving his Ph.D., Professor Smith worked extensively in the telecommunications and information systems industries, first with GTE in their laboratories, telecommunications, and satellite business units and subsequently with Booz Allen and Hamilton as a member of their telecommunications client service team. While with GTE, Professor Smith was awarded a patent for research applying fuzzy logic and artificial intelligence techniques to the design and operation of telecommunications networks.