Recognized for her tireless efforts toward enhancing the student experience and mission of the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, Ritu Agarwal received the UMD President’s Medal during the 38th Annual Faculty and Staff Convocation on Wednesday.

Maryland Smith’s Ritu Agarwal was elected as a fellow of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). The honor is in recognition of her lifetime contributions to the profession and is reserved for only the very top academics and professionals in the field.

Maryland Smith’s Rachelle Sampson is the recipient of the inaugural Panmure House Prize, considered one of the United Kingdom’s largest academic prizes. The $75,000 prize is administered by the Edinburgh Business School at Heriot-Watt University in partnership with U.S.-based long-term investment consultancy FCLTGlobal and funded by Baillie Gifford. It recognizes research identifying potential flows of capital to innovation – in hope of finding the next major technological, retail or pharmaceutical up-and-comer.

Maryland Smith’s Ilya Ryzhov is leveraging a three-year grant awarded by the National Science Foundation to continue research on predictive and prescriptive methods for humanitarian logistics and disaster mitigation.

Maryland Smith’s Serhiy Kozak won the 2020 Fama-DFA Prize for the best paper published in the Journal of Financial Economics in the area of capital markets and asset pricing. Kozak’s research, “Shrinking the Cross Section,” was published in the February 2020 issue of the journal.

Maryland Smith’s Wedad Elmaghraby, professor of operations management and management science, was awarded the Distinguished Service Award for 2021 by the Manufacturing and Service Operations Management (MSOM) society.

Maryland Smith affiliated professor Michele Gelfand, known for her studies of how cultures adapt to external threats, has been elected as one of 120 new members and 30 international members of the National Academy of Sciences.

P. K. Kannan, the Dean’s Chair in Marketing Science at Maryland Smith, has been inducted as a fellow of the European Marketing Academy (EMAC), a recognition of outstanding contributions to the scholarship and practice of marketing and contributions to EMAC.

New research from Maryland Smith’s Margrét Bjarnadóttir that asks how organizations can leverage AI to build a more equitable workforce has been named the Best White Paper in the 2021 Wharton Analytics Conference.

Maryland Smith finance professor Lemma W. Senbet was appointed to a newly created Independent Council of Economic Advisors in his native Ethiopia by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Senbet, an expert and leader in economic policy in Africa, is the William E. Mayer Chair Professor of Finance and the founding director of Smith’s Center for Financial Policy.