Yu Jeffrey Hu is a Full Professor and Accenture Chair at Purdue University’s Daniels School of Business. He is also a Distinguished Fellow of INFORMS Information Systems Society, and has been a Digital Fellow at MIT's Initiative on Digital Economy. He is a world-renowned expert on AI, analytics, digital economy, digital transformation, electronic commerce, omni-channel retailing, offline commerce, social media, and fintech. His research uses AI, econometric, and analytical models to quantify technology-driven user experience in environments such as electronic commerce, omni-channel retailing, offline commerce, social media, mobile app, fintech, and healthcare.
He coauthored the first paper discovering the "Long Tail" phenomenon in Internet markets, the first paper proving the value of social media in predicting stock markets, and the first paper using interpretable AI to quantify ROI of marketing campaigns. He has been an expert, consultant, or advisor for governments in the U.S., Europe, and Asia and many large companies around the world. He is frequently invited to speak at industry conferences.
His research has been published in top journals such as Management Science, Information Systems Research, Management Information Systems Quarterly, Review of Financial Studies, Marketing Science, and MIT Sloan Management Review. His research has been discussed and cited by media outlets such as Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Reuters, Bloomberg, InformationWeek, Wired Magazine, TIME Magazine, Forbes, INC. Magazine, The Telegraph, National Public Radio, SeekingAlpha.com, Bankrate.com, etc. His papers have been adopted for classroom use by many top universities around the world.
He has won a number of research awards such as the inaugural Management Science Best Paper Award in Information Systems. He has also won a number of teaching awards, including Georgia Tech’s Course Instructor Opinion Survey Teaching Award and Fulltime MBA Elective Professor of the Year. He has been Georgia Tech’s Hesburgh Award Teaching Fellow and been nominated for Purdue University’s Teaching For Tomorrow Award. Student teams advised by him have won a number of national competitions.
He has built and led degree and non-degree programs and centers. For instance, he co-led the launch of Master of Science in Analytics, an MBA concentration and an undergraduate certificate in business analytics, and Business Analytics Center , and served as the degree’s Associate Director and the center’s co-Director. He has developed and taught executive education programs to many C-level executives.
He has mentored many PhD students and junior professors who have become tenured, full, or chair professors at top universities in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. He has been an Associate Editor for several top journals and organized several international conferences.