Professor Manoj K Tiwari

Director

Indian Institute of Management Mumbai

Prof. Manoj Kumar Tiwari (FNAE, FNASc, FIISE) is the Director of IIM Mumbai (formerly NITIE Mumbai) since 2019. Under his leadership, the institute rose from 29 to 9 in the NIRF Management Rankings. He is currently on lien from IIT Kharagpur, where he served as Professor (HAG), Head of Department, Dean, and Board of Governors Member.

A globally recognized expert in Manufacturing Systems and Supply Chain Management, Prof. Tiwari has authored over 350 research papers, with an H-index of 82 (Google Scholar). He was ranked #1 globally for contributions to the International Journal of Production Research (1985–2010) and listed among the top 20 most productive authors in Production and Operations Management over the past 50 years.

His accolades include the David F. Baker Distinguished Research Award (IISE, USA, 2023) and the Mahalanobis Distinguished Educator Award (ORSI). He serves on editorial boards of several top journals and plays a key role in national academic bodies such as GIAN and AICTE. He is a Fellow of IISE (USA), INAE, and NASI.

Professor Subodha Kumar

Paul R. Anderson Professor, Founding Director

Center for Business Analytics and Disruptive Technologies
Fox School of Business and Management, Temple University

Prof. Subodha Kumar is the Paul R. Anderson Distinguished Chair Professor of Statistics, Operations, and Data Science and the Founding Director of the Center for Business Analytics and Disruptive Technologies at Temple University’s Fox School of Business. He has a secondary appointment in Information Systems. He also serves as the Concentration Director for Ph.D. Program in Operations and Supply Chain Management. Prof. Subodha Kumar is a board member of many organizations. China’s Ministry of Education has awarded him a Changjiang Scholars Chair Professorship. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Indian School of Business (ISB). He has served on the University of Washington and Texas A&M University faculty. He was awarded the INFORMS Information Systems Society (ISS) Distinguished Fellow Award in 2023. He was also elected to become a Production and Operations Management Society (POMS) Fellow in 2019. To honor Subodha, the Management and Business Review has instituted “The Subodha Kumar and Geoffrey G. Parker Award for Research on Digital Transformation.” He has received numerous other research and teaching awards. He has published more than 240 papers in reputed journals and refereed conferences. He was ranked #1 worldwide for publishing in Information Systems Research. In addition, he has authored two books, book chapters, Harvard Business School cases, and Ivey Business School cases. He also holds a robotics patent. He has also received grants from national agencies such as the National Institute of Health (NIH).

Professor Arnab Kumar Laha

RBI Chair Professor, Indian Statistical Institute Kolkata

Operations and Decision Sciences, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad

Prof. Arnab K Laha is a member of the faculty of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. He is also serving as RBI Chair Professor at Indian Statistical Institute. Prof. Arnab Kumar Laha did his Bachelors, Masters and Doctoral studies in Statistics at the Indian Statistical Institute. He takes a keen interest in understanding how analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence can be leveraged to solve complex problems in business and society. His research deals with the creation of new methodologies for data analysis with a focus on non-Euclidean data while his teaching interest includes Advanced Data Analytics, Quality Management, and Risk Modeling. He has published more than thirty-five papers in peer-reviewed national and international journals of repute and has served on the editorial boards of several journals. He has been the supervisor /co-supervisor of more than 10 doctoral students. He was featured among India’s best business school professors by Business Today in 2006 and Business India in 2012 and was named one of the “10 Most Prominent Analytics Academicians in India” by Analytics India Magazine in 2014 and 2017 and as one of the "20 most prominent Analytics and Data Science Academicians in India" by Analytics India Magazine in 2018. He is the author of the popular book on analytics "How to Make the Right Decision" published by Penguin-Random House and is the editor of two book volumes on advanced analytics published by Springer. He is a member of the governing council / academic council/committees of several reputed organizations/institutes. He has conducted a large number of open enrolment, blended learning, and customized executive education programmes and has undertaken consultancy work for many reputed organizations.

Dr. Sayan Putatunda

Applied Science Manager

Amazon

Dr. Sayan Putatunda is an AI/ML leader with 12+ years of experience driving innovation at Fortune 500 tech companies, and a PhD in Applied Statistics & Machine Learning from Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) - India’s top-ranked research and management institution. Currently he is leading geospatial science and LLM-based initiatives as Applied Science Manager at Amazon, with prior leadership roles at Walmart and VMware. Dr. Sayan Putatunda’s doctoral research at IIMA focused on ML for streaming data and its applications to transportation systems. His research has been published in top-tier (ABDC A* and Scimago Q1 ranked) journals like Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, Neural Computing & Applications, and presented at premier conferences (KDD, IEEE, ACM). He is also the author of the book “Practical Machine Learning for Streaming Data with Python” (Publisher- Apress/Springer), bridging academic innovation with industry-scale deployment. Innovation is at his core - with granted patents across US, German, and Australian jurisdictions, spanning diverse areas from customer-partner matching to last-mile optimization. His inventions have directly impacted product development and customer experience at major tech companies. To complement his technical foundation, he has completed executive education from MIT (Tech Leadership), Harvard (Cybersecurity), Oxford (Fintech), and Yale (Product Management) - equipping him to lead at the intersection of AI, business strategy, and organizational impact.