About

I am an Assistant Professor of Information Systems at the Sauder School of Business of the University of British Columbia. My research focuses on analyzing individual behavior in technology-enabled markets using both structured and unstructured data (e.g., video, image, text, audio). I am particularly interested in understanding how technology influences consumer behavior in markets for digital learning. Prior to joining UBC Sauder, I obtained my Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College and received the William W. Cooper Doctoral Dissertation Award in Management or Management Science.

My friends and family call me Mi \miː\ (密) or Zhou \dʒəʊ\ (小周).

A full curriculum vita is available here.

Updates

• Jun 2024: Awarded OpenAI’s Researcher Access Grant (with Luca Cascio Rizzo and Jonah Berger) $5,000.

• May 2024: Recent research covered in UBC News.

• Apr 2024: I was awarded a SSHRC Insight Grant (with Gene Moo Lee) $88,561.

• Mar 2024: My paper titled "Linking Clicks to Bricks: Understanding the Effects of Email Advertising on Multichannel Sales" was published at Information Systems Research. 

• Oct 2023: First-year PhD student Xiaoke Zhang's paper was selected as one of the six finalists for the Best Student Paper Award at CIST. Many congrats to Xiaoke! 🎉🥳

• Oct 2023: Graduating PhD student Zining Wang will join Boston College as an Assitant Professor of Marketing in 2024. Many congrats to Zining! 🎉🥳

• Aug 2023: My working paper titled "Bias in Generative AI" was accepted at the Wharton Business & Generative AI Conference, and another on generative AI and the creator economy was accepted at CIST.

• Jul 2023: My paper with Xiaoke Zhang and Gene Moo Lee titled "How Does AI-Generated Voice Affect Online Video Creation? Evidence from TikTok" received the Best Paper Runner-Up Award at the KrAIS Summer Workshop.

• Mar 2023: My paper with Cheng Yi and Zhenhui (Jack) Jiang titled "Investigating the Effects of Product Popularity and Time Restriction: The Moderating Role of Consumers’ Goal Specificity" was accepted for publication at Production and Operations Management.

• Jan 2023: My paper with Wen Wang, Beibei Li, and Honglei Zhuang titled "Predicting Instructor Performance in Online Education: An Interpretable Hierarchical Transformer with Contextual Attention" was conditionally accepted for publication at Information Systems Research.

• Oct 2022: Three working papers were presented at the INFORMS Annual Meeting, INFORMS Workshop on Data Science, and CIST.

• Jun 2022: I was awarded a SSHRC Insight Development Grant $50,825.

• Jun 2022: I was invited to give a talk at the Marketing Science Conference special session on video analytics.

• Dec 2021: My paper with Yangfan Liang, Pedro Ferreira, and Michael D. Smith titled "The Impact of Instructor Personality on the Success of Online Educational Videos: A Multimodal Deep Learning Approach" was presented at WISE.

• Oct 2021: I chaired a session at the INFORMS Annual Meeting and presented my paper titled "Learning from Machines: Can AI Tools Enhance Human Learning Online?" at CIST.

• Sep 2021: I was awarded a CIDER grant in innovative data in economics research from UBC Vancouver School of Economics $10,500.

• Aug 2021: I was invited to give a keynote talk at KDD Workshop on Machine Learning for Consumers and Markets.

• Jul 2021: My paper with George H. Chen, Pedro Ferreira, and Michael D. Smith titled "Consumer Behavior in the Online Classroom: Using Video Analytics and Machine Learning to Understand the Consumption of Video Courseware" was accepted for publication at the Journal of Marketing Research.

• Jan-May 2021: I taught my first course titled "Business Programming and Analytics" at UBC.