Custom Programs for Organizations
At the Smith School, forward-thinking leadership and cutting-edge research come together to shape the next generation of organizational strategy. Our faculty members are global experts in analytics, digital transformation and artificial intelligence. We turn research into action that drives business success in an age of disruption.
Whether your goal is to drive innovation, improve decision-making or build an ethical, sustainable AI culture, Smith Executive Education provides the expertise and tools to make it happen.
Faculty Highlights
Balaji Padmanabhan, PhD, is the associate dean of strategic initiatives and professor of decision, operations and information technologies. He has worked in the data science, AI/machine learning and business analytics areas for 25 years. His current work addresses the design of artificial and augmented intelligence solutions that combine data, machine learning and modeling of the real world through complex systems simulations. His research has broad applications across business, policy, media and healthcare.
Kunpeng Zhang, PhD, worked as an assistant professor of information and decision science at the University of Illinois Chicago from 2013 to 2015, before joining the Smith School. His research focuses on applying scalable machine learning, natural language processing and social network analysis techniques to big data problems in business and healthcare. He is also a part-time research scientist at Meta.
Margrét Bjarnadóttir, PhD, is an associate professor of management science and statistics in the DO&IT group. Bjarnadóttir specializes in operations research methods using large-scale data; her research centers on data-driven decision-making, combining optimization modeling with data analytics. Her work spans applications in healthcare, finance, people analytics and sports. Bjarnadóttir has consulted with healthcare startups on risk modeling using healthcare data, as well as with government agencies such as a central bank on data-driven fraud detection algorithms.
Oliver Schlake, PhD, is a clinical professor at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, a senior business consultant, entrepreneur and researcher. His publications and research on scenario-based strategic planning and innovation strategy have been featured in leading academic and practitioner journals worldwide. Schlake has been an international management consultant and strategic adviser for leading companies and government agencies in Europe and North America.
Rajshree Agarwal, PhD, is the Rudolph Lamone Chair of Strategy and Entrepreneurship and the director of the Ed Snider Center for Enterprise and Markets at the University of Maryland. She studies the evolution of industries, firms, and individual careers as fostered by the twin engines of innovation and enterprise. Her teaching and work with growth-oriented firms help professionals advance through personal leadership, develop win-win relationships, and create a virtuous spiral between their aspirations and abilities.
Research in Action: The Smith Advantage
Smith faculty don’t just teach AI. They define how organizations use it to compete and grow. Participants will:
- Build cross-functional teams that implement AI responsibly
- Navigate the ethical and organizational challenges of digital transformation
- Develop data-informed strategies for innovation and growth
- Evaluate emerging technologies for real business impact
Plan Your Organization’s AI Journey
Every successful AI initiative starts with a clear plan aligning technology, talent, and strategy. Smith’s executive education experts will help create the solutions that deliver measurable impact. The sessions described below are a representative sample of a program that could be used to develop a roadmap to success. For a full catalog of program offerings, please complete the form at the bottom of this page.
Aligning AI Initiatives with Business Priorities
This session equips executives with frameworks to connect AI adoption to core organizational strategies. Participants will learn how to prioritize initiatives that strike a balance between innovation, operational efficiency, and measurable business outcomes.
Best Practices for Sustainable AI Impact
This session focuses on sustaining the impact of AI within IT systems and enterprise operations. Faculty will highlight how organizations can ensure that AI investments deliver long-term efficiency, scalability, and resilience. Executives will examine strategies for building durable architectures, governance models, and adoption practices that ensure AI initiatives are sustainable in the IT sense, providing reliability and ongoing business value.
Roadmaps for Internal Transformation & Change Management
Focusing on organizational readiness, this session provides tools for embedding AI into internal processes. Participants will examine change management strategies to scale adoption, align teams, and ensure resilience across departments.
AI Security and Ethics
This session explains adversarial attack prevention, data breach mitigation, AI bias, fairness, responsible design, and governance. Participants will review best practices and develop ethical AI guidance and internal standards for transparency and accountability.
AI in the Federal Acquisition Process
This session demonstrates the use of AI for automating contract analysis, cost estimation, risk assessment, RFP/proposal processing. Participants learn hands-on how to design prompts, build retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems, and develop AI tools for a secure environment to ensure data privacy.
Technology Leadership and Governance
Leaders must prepare their organizations for the latest digital trends and disruptions beyond AI. This session explains the process for designing, engineering, testing, and commercializing new technology. Leaders will then identify enterprise tech requirements and best practices in risk management, create market and mission strategies for emergent tech, and discover management strategies for the ethical implications of new tech.
What Our Partners Say
“The UMD team always brings unique perspectives to our classes that offer our participants an incredibly valuable ‘outsider’ view of our industry and current marketplace trends.”
Program Administrator
Lockheed Martin
Past Partners Include
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