Tunay I. Tunca

Tunay Tunca is the Dean’s Professor of Management Science and Operations Management at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at University of Maryland. He received his M.S. in Management Science from University of Rochester, and M.S. in Financial Mathematics and Ph.D. in Business Administration from Stanford University. Prior to joining University of Maryland, he was an Associate Professor of Operations, Information, and Technology at Stanford GSB. Professor Tunca has also been a visiting scholar at the Sloan School of Business at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Wharton School of Business at University of Pennsylvania. His research interests are in economics of operations management, focusing on theoretical and empirical analysis of supply chains, innovative operations, sharing economy business models and the role of AI usage in human decision making. His research has won awards and recognitions from top academic journals and research organizations such as Management Science, M&SOM, iFORM, POMS, and CSAMSE. He has served as an Associate Editor for several leading academic journals, including currently for Management Science and M&SOM.

He is the winner of a number of teaching awards at the Smith School, including the Allen J. Krowe Teaching Excellence Award in 2014 and 2019; Distinguished Teaching Awards in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2023 and 2024; the Most Effective Core Professor Award from the Full Time MBA students in 2023, 2024, and 2025; and the William D. Bradford Spirit of Excellence Award from Black MBA and Latin MBA Student Associations in 2024, as well as being selected as Favorite Professor by DC MBA students.

At Smith, he served as the founder and director of the MS in Business Analytics program and the cofounder and codirector of the Smith Analytics Consortium. He has also worked in joint projects with a number of companies including DiDi Chuxing, Hewlett Packard, General Electric, JD, Taobao, Meituan, Novartis AG, and Yahoo Inc. His work has been featured or quoted in various media outlets including The Economist, Forbes, US News and World Report, and Investors’ Business Daily.