Arun Rai is Regents’ Professor of the University System of Georgia, holds the Howard S. Starks Distinguished Chair, and is Director of the Center for Digital Innovation at the Robinson College of Business (RCB) at Georgia State University. He has held visiting appointments at universities in Australia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, and Slovenia. He was named a Fellow of the Association for Information Systems and a Distinguished Fellow of the INFORMS Information Systems Society and the Association for Information Systems LEO Award for Lifetime Exceptional Achievement in the Information Systems discipline.

For over 30 years, Arun’s research has focused on the development and deployment of information systems to drive innovation and create value. His research has contributed to understanding the digital transformation of organizations and supply chains; governance of IT investments and platform ecosystems; and deployment of digital innovations at scale to empower individuals and address thorny societal problems including poverty, health disparities, infant mortality, and digital inequality.

His research has involved close engagement with organizations across sectors (e.g., Apollo Hospitals, China Mobile, Daimler-Chrysler, Emory Healthcare, Gartner, Georgia-Pacific, Grady Hospital, IBM, Intel, SAP, SunTrust, UPS), and has been sponsored by government agencies, major corporations and their research labs and innovation centers, and thought leadership forums.

Arun’s work has been published extensively in premier journals in IS and other disciplines, with 250 peer-reviewed articles that include 120 refereed journal articles in journals such as MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Management Science, Production and Operations Management, Journal of Operations Management, and Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. He is ranked among the top 5 scholars for publications over the last 20 years in the IS field’s top-2 journals (MISQ and ISR). His work has received several best paper awards and has been widely cited both in leading journals in the IS discipline and in leading journals in other disciplines (e.g., Accounting, Marketing, Operations Management, Strategic Management, Computer Science, Education, Healthcare, and Psychology).

He has played leadership roles in developing research programs and curricula related to digital innovation, digital transformation of supply chains and business processes, analytics, and artificial intelligence augmented systems. He has taught courses on digital strategy, supply chain management, technology and operations, theory development, engaged scholarship, and research methods across the BS, MBA, EMBA, MS, Executive Doctorate, and Ph.D. programs. He has chaired 30 Ph.D. dissertations and served as committee member on over thirty. Several of his former Ph.D. students are chaired professors and hold senior leadership positions at their institutions (e.g., doctoral program directors, department chairs, associate deans) and in the profession (e.g., editors of journals, officers of major professional organizations). He has developed and delivered non-degree executive education programs for major corporations (e.g., the Global Supply Chain Solutions Program for UPS’s senior and middle management during the company’s transformation from transportation services to supply chain solutions).

In terms of internal service, Arun co-founded the Center for Process Innovation (renamed Center for Digital Innovation in Fall 2019), which developed to a leading interdisciplinary research center focused on how digital innovation can address problems in business and society. He served three consecutive three-year terms as RCB’s Promotion and Tenure Committee Chair and has served on several key university, college and unit committees.

In terms of external service, he served a 5-year term (2016-2020) as Editor-in-Chief of MIS Quarterly (MISQ), widely regarded as the premier IS journal. He has also served as Senior Editor for MISQ, ISR, and Journal of Strategic Information Systems and Associate Editor for several leading journals (e.g., ISR, MISQ, Management Science, JMIS); Panelist for the National Science Foundation; Track Co-Chair for major conferences; chair, mentor and keynote speaker for doctoral/junior faculty/mid-career faculty consortia; and President of the Special Interest Group on the Adoption and Diffusion of Information Technology He is serving on the Board of Directors of Apollo Indraprastha Medical Corporation and Apollo Health and Lifestyle Limited, and on the Developing and Deploying at Scale Disruptive Technologies Working Group of the US National Commission on Innovation and Competitiveness Frontiers.