CTI Director

Dr. Scott Schanke is an Assistant Professor of Information Technology Management at UWM’s Lubar College of Business. His research seeks to identify and quantify effective approaches to the design and implementation of the entities that represent firms and brands in customer interactions, e.g., AI-enabled conversational agents and digital brand personalities. To causally identify the merits and detriments of alternative design characteristics, he has employed a combination of controlled laboratory experiments, as well as field experiments in partnership with several U.S.-based firms.

Before embarking on his academic career, Dr. Schanke worked in technology consulting at Accenture, where he worked on a variety of large-scale IT projects ranging from point-of sale systems, IT security, and Big Data analytics.

Faculty Affiliates

Faculty at the Lubar College of Business offer a breadth and diversity of expertise across the information technology field and are recognized among top IT researchers nationwide. With advanced training and doctorates from many of the country’s leading universities, CTI-affiliated faculty can assist businesses and other organizations with the unique IT challenges they face. Lubar faculty in information technology management, supply chain, and accounting also provide expertise in enterprise resource planning, with a specific focus on SAP.

  • Cheng Chen
    Dr. Cheng Chen is collaborating on a project that investigates social TV activity by exploiting a large-scale television program, Super Bowl. In this project, he and his co-researchers examine the impact of television-program-induced emotional shocks and find a significant effect on the arousal and valence of viewers’ online word-of-mouth toward commercial ads. Their work provides clear and practical implications on media buying strategies for advertisers, as it suggests that advertisers and television networks should be cognizant of the emotional states of advertisements and programming content when placing ads, and aligning ad emotion with TV content emotion could render some synergies.
  • Yang Wang
    Dr. Wang collaborates with online retailers and service providers and helps them develop artifacts that address various business problems. One project he has been involved in is the design of a product review platform for an outdoor gear and clothing retailer. By adding new review functions that allow buyers to evaluate the fit of apparel goods, the company obtained a significant drop in product return rates. The long-term goal is to build a fit profile for individual customers and make personalized product attribute-based recommendations.
  • Huimin Zhao
    Dr. Zhao’s current research interests include data mining and healthcare informatics. His recent work focuses on patient hospital readmission risk and cost prediction, financial risk prediction for individuals and companies, crowdfunding success prediction, online review attractiveness prediction, and potential reviewer prediction, leveraging multimodal data from diverse sources.

CTI Faculty & Staff Affiliates

Derek Nazareth
  • Associate Professor, Information Technology Management
scott schanke
  • Assistant Professor, Information Technology Management
  • Director, Center for Technology Innovation
Atish Sinha
  • Rockwell Automation Endowed Professor in Connected Systems
  • Professor, Information Technology Management
  • Academic Director, Connected Systems Institute
  • Professor, Information Technology Management
  • Director of Accreditation
Yang Wang
  • Assistant Professor, Information Technology Management
Huimin Zhao
  • Professor, Information Technology Management
  • Church Mutual Insurance Faculty Scholar in ITM
  • Roger L. Fitzsimonds Distinguished Scholar
Andrea Zweifel
  • Administrative Specialist, Center for Technology Innovation & SAP University Competence Center

Dr. Scott Schanke
Director, Center for Technology Innovation
Assistant Professor, Information Technology Management
Lubar Hall N369
414-251-6758
schanke@uwm.edu