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Dream Hire Focused on Improving Human Capital Through STEM Integration

02-03-2025

The Daniels School of Business welcomes dream hire Gwendolyn Lee, a leading researcher of the transformative impact of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI).

Lee will join Purdue in June 2025 as part of the university’s Moveable Dream Hires program. The talent-based Moveable Dream Hires program is designed to attract high-performing, top-caliber faculty to Purdue even when the topic-based openings in a given year do not match the moveable talent.

Lee, currently the Chester C. Holloway Professor for Strategy, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business, is a top scholar of disruptions and interdependencies in complex adaptive systems. Her interests include strategic management, industry evolution/disruption, organizational adaptation, value creation/appropriation/innovation, and digital platforms.

“Gwen has established a reputation for research in strategic management topics, but always with a connection to building resources and capabilities — dynamic issues such as market entry and organizational issues such as community-based versus firm-based knowledge creation,” says Tom Brush, professor of management and head of strategic management at Purdue’s business school. “With the Daniels School of Business moving more into technology commercialization and innovation management branding, she was pursued to help our Strategic Management Area anchor its research, recruiting and teaching in these areas.”

Lee will teach in the Strategic Management PhD program and also a technology strategy course for both undergraduates and for the Master of Business and Technology (MBT) program. She will also coordinate a speakers workshop series in the spring semester, Brush notes.

Lee says she was attracted to the Daniels School by opportunities to collaborate with faculty and students on high-impact projects. These projects, she says, will focus on “improving managerial practices and upgrading global human capital, particularly through the integration of science, technology, engineering, math and business.”

Her recent research advances the frontier of strategic management, exploring the transformative impact of machine learning/AI, industry-shaping dynamics in the generation of sustainable energy, and critical challenges in the governance of AI.

“Gwen’s experience and teaching interests in technology strategy, innovation and entrepreneurship are key as we expand our teaching portfolio in these directions,” says Blake Family Endowed Chair in Strategic Management and Governance Jeffrey Reuer.

Lee has published many research articles with managerial impact in leading academic journals, including the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, and Strategy Science. She has received United States National Science Foundation (NSF) funding for several interdisciplinary projects.

She is on the editorial review boards of Strategy Science as a senior editor and Journal of Organization Design as an associate editor. She is a member of the editorial review boards of Strategic Management Review, Academy of Management Review and Strategic Management Journal. She earned her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley, where she was a Management of Technology Fellow.