Kevin-ScheibeWelcome to the Department of Information Systems and Business Analytics

Do you want to make a difference? In information systems and business analytics (ISBA), we do. Technology and data are the lifeblood of modern organizations, and in our programs, we enable our graduates to be integral parts of those organizations and society. Our faculty deeply cares about the success of our students and invest in their education. They also strive to make a difference through their research and have been recognized for their excellence. According to the Association for Information Systems, our research is ranked in the top 50 universities globally.

Meet the Ivy College of Business Department of Information Systems and Business Analytics faculty and staff.

Kevin Scheibe, Chair, Department of Information Systems and Business Analytics

Gain the power to create and restructure industries

Our 2023 graduates

  • $67,909

    average management information systems starting salary

In today’s business landscape, information systems and business analytics are pivotal elements that drive success. Information systems form the digital foundation of modern enterprises, while business analytics involves the strategic analysis of data to extract meaningful insights. Information systems have the power to create and restructure industries, empower individuals and firms, and dramatically reduce costs. Business analytics empowers organizations to make precise, data-driven decisions that optimize operations, enhance strategies, and fuel overall growth. Explore these essential fields to understand how data and technology come together, providing the knowledge needed to make informed decisions and achieve remarkable outcomes.

ISBA faculty key publications

What’s happening?

The Ivy College of Business Department of Information Systems and Business Analytics hosts many events throughout the year, including Iowa’s premier Business Analytics Symposium. Learn more about this Ivy signature event below.

Business Analytics Symposium

Business Analytics Symposium

Iowa’s premier analytics event brings together analytics professionals and decision makers from some of the nation’s leading insurance, financial services, marketing, and manufacturing companies.

Faculty research spotlight

AI with a Human Face: The Case for—and Against—Digital Employees

Lingyao Yuan

Harvard Business Review

Researchers from four academic institutions joined together to offer their insights on the future of the workforce where humans work side by side with digital employees. Drawn from interviews with founders and CEOs of companies such as Soul Machines, Pinscreen, Zozotown, and Synthesia, which have successfully deployed digital employees, the authors provided general guidelines to help companies identify opportunities for using digital employees within their organizations. While cautiously warning the companies not to blindly dive into this new technology, the authors point out the benefits of productivity gain once pairing the correct type of digital employee with suitable business functions.

Lingyao (Ivy) Yuan is an assistant professor of information systems and business analytics.

PhD student spotlight

Tim Su Tim Su is a PhD candidate specializing in information systems and business analytics. Su received his bachelor of science in electronic information science and technology from Shandong University, master of science in telecommunication circuit and system from Beijing University, and MBA from the College of William and Mary’s Mason School of Business, prior to joining Iowa State University’s PhD program. He has 10 years of work experience as a patent attorney and patent analyst. Read more about Tim.

See where Ivy’s PhD students are placed after graduation

Gerdin Business Building

Research at Ivy

Faculty members across every department at the Ivy College of Business consistently contribute to their respective fields by regularly publishing in top journals. Researchers are vital to finding solutions to today’s business challenges.

ISBA department news

Tony Townsend, associate professor of information systems and business analytics, and the Department of Finance were mentioned in an Iowa State Daily article, “Faculty Senate Votes on New Certificates, Renaming After Debate.”

Young Woong Park, assistant professor of information systems and business analytics:

  • Was invited to present a seminar at Ajou University School of Business in Korea and presented his paper, “Robust and Inclusive Matching Method for Causal Inference on Grocery Coupon Effects,” online.
  • Had his workshop paper, “Improving Analyst Forecasts: Mitigating Correlated and Biased Forecasts,” presented at the INFORMS Workshop on Data Science in Seattle, Washington. The paper was co-authored with Kangbok Lee (Auburn University), Yeasung Jeong (University at Albany), Hyeoncheol Baik (Stockton University), and Sumin Han (Auburn University).

Rui Chen, Dean’s Fellow in Information Systems, has organized a special issue, “Artificial Intelligence-Information Assurance Nexus: The Future of Information Systems Security, Privacy, and Quality” for MIS Quarterly, an Ivy elite journal. He serves as a guest editor for this special issue.

Abhay Mishra, Kingland Systems Business Analytics Faculty Fellow and professor of information systems and business analytics, had a paper accepted for publication in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR). The paper, “Can Telehealth Mitigate Health Disparities Associated with Travel Time to Hospital for Patients with Recurrent Admissions: A Four-Year Panel Data Analysis,” was co-authored with Youyou Tao, Ace Vo, Dezhi Wu, Junyuan Lin, Kala Seal, and Arin Brahma. JMIR is among the top journals in the field of medical informatics.

Abhay Mishra, professor and Kingland Systems Business Analytics Faculty Fellow, and Angela Lu (City University of Hong Kong) had their grant proposal accepted by the Research Grants Council, Hong Kong. They received HK$414,300 (approximately US$53,000) through the General Research Fund for their proposal “Competitive Ecology of Digital Markets: Concentration, Diversified Growth, and Product Distinctiveness in the Platform Economy.”

Guy Helmer, professor of practice in information systems and business analytics, was interviewed for KCCI’s news story “Why Lumen’s Water Leak Caused Such Widespread Phone, Internet Outages.”

Six Ivy faculty were mentioned in an Iowa State Research article, “OVPR Welcomes 20 Faculty to Research Collaboration Catalysts 2024-2025 Cohort,” including Rui Chen, Dean’s Fellow in Information Systems, and Abhay Mishra, Kingland Systems Business Analytics Faculty Fellow.

Guy Helmerprofessor of practice in information systems, was interviewed about the Lumen, CenturyLink internet outage in this KCCI story, Why Lumen’s water leak caused such widespread phone, internet outages.”

View more news

Young Woong Park, assistant professor of information systems and business analytics:

  • Had a paper accepted for publication in Patter Recognition. The paper, “Observation Weights Matching Approach for Causal Inference,” was co-authored with Kang Bok Lee and Sumin Han (Auburn University), Hyeoncheol Baik (Stockton University), and Yeasung Jeong (University at Albany).
  • Had a paper accepted for publication in Machine Learning. The paper, “A Systematic Approach for Learning Imbalanced Data: Enhancing Zero-Inflated Models Through Boosting,” was co-authored with Yeasung Jeong (University at Albany) and Kang Bok Lee and Sumin Han (Auburn University).

Abhay Nath Mishra, professor of information systems and business analytics; Tong Xu (City University of Hong Kong); and Angela Lu (City University of Hong Kong) had their paper, “Social Movement on Organization: How ‘Black Lives Matter’ Movement Influences Airbnb Performance,” accepted by the SIM Division at the 84th Academy of Management Annual Meeting, to be held August 9-13 in Chicago, Illinois.

Cheng Nie, associate professor of information systems and business analytics, along with Tao Zhu, Zhengrui Jiang, and Xiangpei Hu, had their paper, “When Do Consumers Buy During Online Promotions? A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation,” accepted for publication in Decision Support Systems.

Young Woong Park, assistant professor, has been honored with the title of senior member of INFORMS, acknowledging his dedicated involvement and contributions to the association.

Archived news

Alec Dennis, assistant professor of information systems and business analytics, had a research paper cited in an article in The Wall Street Journal, “Why Introverted Leaders Are Ideal for the Postpandemic Workplace.”

Lingyao (Ivy) Yuan, associate professor of information systems and business analytics, was mentioned in the Mirage News article “Research: Consumers Spend More on Talking TV Products.”

Lingyao (Ivy) Yuan, associate professor of information systems and business analytics, was mentioned in an article on The Debrief, Unlocking the Power of Anthropomorphism: How Products With Human-Like Traits Could Shape Your Next Purchase.”

Lingyao (Ivy) Yuan, associate professor of information systems and business analytics, organized a workshop, “Facing the Future: Implementing AI-Powered Digital Humans Across Disciplines,” at the 57th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

Rui Chen, Dean’s Fellow in Information Systems and professor of information systems and business analytics, was invited to the annual MIS Academic Leadership Conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The event was hosted by the Fox School of Business at Temple University.

Young Woong Park, assistant professor of information systems and business analytics, had his paper, “Coarsened Robust and Inclusive Matching Method,” accepted at the INFORMS Workshop on Data Science. The paper is one of the Best Paper Award nominees and is co-authored with Kangbok Lee (Auburn University) and Yeasung Jeong (State University of New York at Albany).

Abhay Mishra, Kingland Systems Business Analytics Faculty Fellow and associate professor of information systems and business analytics:

  • Had his paper, “Illicit Drug Supply Chains and Information Systems,” accepted for Technology, Research, Education, and Opinion (TREO) Talks at the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), which will be held in December in Hyderabad, India.
  • Will be a co-organizer of the 2024 Conference on Information Systems and Technology (CIST), which will be held in Seattle, Washington. CIST is organized by the Information Systems Society, which is affiliated with INFORMS.

Rui Chen, Dean’s Fellow in Information Systems and professor of information systems and business analytics, had his paper, “A Computational Framework for Understanding Firm Communication During Disasters,” accepted for publication in Information Systems Research.

Abhay Mishra, Kingland Systems Business Analytics Faculty Fellow and associate professor of information systems, had a paper accepted at the 2023 Conference of Information Systems and Technology (CIST). The paper “From Protests to Platforms: Impact Dynamics of Black Lives Matter on Airbnb Listing Performance” was co-authored with Tong Xu and Angela Lu (City University of Hong Kong). CIST is organized by the Information Systems Society under the aegis of INFORMS.

Tim Su, PhD student, had his paper, “IT Capabilities and Exploratory Innovation of Tech-M&A,” accepted for presentation at the 2023 Conference of Information Systems and Technology (CIST). The paper was co-authored with Manjot Bhussar, assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship, and Abhay Mishra.

Lingyao (Ivy) Yuan, associate professor of information systems and business analytics and director of graduate education for business analytics, attended the 2023 Americas Conference on Information Systems in Panama City, Panama. She served as a panelist on “Research on AI in a Rapidly Changing World,” as the mini-track chair for “AI Agents,” and as the session chair for “AI Agents and Human Interaction.”

Cheng Nie, assistant professor of information systems and business analytics, had a paper, “Firm Competitive Structure and Consumer Reaction in Search Advertising,” accepted for publication in the Journal of the Association for Information Systems. The paper was coauthored with Zhiqiang (Eric) Zheng and Sumit Sarkar, both from University of Texas at Dallas.

Young Woong Park, assistant professor of information systems and business analytics, presented his work, “Robust and Inclusive Matching: A Mixed Integer Linear Program Approach,” at seminars at Yonsei University (School of Business) and Korea University (School of Industrial and Management Engineering) in Seoul, Korea.

Cheng Nie, assistant professor of information systems and business analytics, had a paper, “How Online Information Influences Offline Transactions: Insights from Digital Real Estate Platforms,” accepted for publication in Information Systems Research. The paper was co-authored with Zhengrui Jiang (previously at Iowa State University, now at Nanjing University); Arun Rai (Georgia State University); Hua Sun, associate professor of finance; and Yuheng Hu (University of Illinois Chicago).

Abhay Mishra, Kingland Systems Business Analytics Faculty Fellow, and co-authors Jennifer Kendziorra, Anne-Katrin Witte, Till Winkler, Yu Tong, and Juhee Kwon had their paper, “The Quest for Agility at the National Level: Digital Responses to Covid-19 in Five Countries,” accepted for publication in Communications of the Association for Information Systems. This work benefited greatly from a workshop that Abhay organized at the Ivy College of Business in October 2018.

Get involved with information systems and business analytics

Learn more about the Information Systems and Business Analytics (ISBA) Club at Iowa State as well as the many other student clubs and organizations to help you make connections and build your business skills.

ISBA Club

Student organizations

At the Ivy College of Business, there are many ways to get involved. Participate in one of the many student organizations at Ivy and take advantage of the opportunity to share your talents, make new friends, and contribute to the Ivy community.

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Department of Information Systems and Business Analytics

2340 Gerdin Business Building
2167 Union Drive
Ames, Iowa 50011

Kevin Scheibe

Chair, Department of Information Systems and Business Analytics
Union Pacific Professor for Information Systems and Business Analytics
kscheibe@iastate.edu

Kristina Happel