Krannert’s Mohammad Rahman recognized with 2018 ISS Early Career Award

Thursday, November 8, 2018

Mohammad Rahman, an associate professor in the Krannert School of Management at Purdue University, was recently honored with the 2018 Information Systems Society (ISS) Sandy Slaughter Early Career Award.

The spirit of the award is to honor the memory of the late Professor Sandy Slaughter, who was tireless in her pursuit of recognizing the potential leaders of the "next generation" of information systems academics. It is presented to early career individuals who are on a path towards making outstanding intellectual contributions to the information systems discipline.

Rahman is an expert on the myriad ways in which digital platforms have grown to revolutionize the world of commerce and fundamentally change how businesses interact with consumers. His research focuses primarily on digital business, big data, omni-channel retailing, technology usage, retail and web analytics, and consumer behavior and decision making.

Rahman’s work has been published in major journals including Management Science, Information Systems Research, and MIT Sloan Management Review. His papers also have been accepted in several leading conferences, and his research has been supported by multiple Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) grants.

“Today, when it comes to data complexity, nothing really scares me,” he says. “It’s rather an opportunity to generate simple and useful insights.”

In a recent study on Airbnb’s economic impact in neighborhoods in New York and five other cities, for example, Rahman and Krannert PhD student Mohammed Alyakoob used web crawlers to collect millions of data points, including 34 million Yelp reviews, and used complex algorithms as well as econometrics to quantify the impact of Airbnb rentals on surrounding restaurant employment.

“One thing that has been important for me is really understanding the context of my research,” he says. “I think this is where you build acumen, you make sure you’re not really missing something obvious. By relying solely on data, you’re basically boxing yourself in with your preconceived ideas. We all have some expectations about our research problems, but that can change if you go talk to the people who are in the field.”

Rahman, who also was named one of the “40 Best Professors Under 40” in 2017 by Poets & Quants, received the ISS Early Career Award during the Conference on Information Systems and Technology (CIST) held in conjunction with the 2018 INFORMS annual meeting on Nov. 3-4 in Phoenix, AZ.