Paul A. Pavlou is the Dean of the C. T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston. He is also the Cullen Distinguished Chair Professor of Decision and Information Sciences.
His research has been cited over 85,000 times by Google Scholar, and he was recognized among the ‘World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds’ by Thomson Reuters based on an analysis of “Highly Cited” authors for 2002-2012. Paul was ranked #1 in the world in publications in the top Information Systems journals in 2010 - 2016. Paul received his Ph.D. in Information Systems and Masters in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California and a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering and in Managerial Studies (Magna Cum Laude) from Rice University.
As Dean of the Bauer College, Paul led the development of the 2020-25 Strategic Plan with a bold new vision to be a world-class business school that transform lives, organizations, and society, and a new bold mission to offer a leading-edge, student-centric education that is accessible and affordable, founded on research and grounded in the real world. The new bold brand message for the Bauer College is The Future is Our BusinessTM. Under his leadership, the C. T. Bauer College of Business is poised to secure over $85M in fundraising and other commitments in four years.
During his tenure, the Bauer College led all business schools to ascend 23 spots in the Full-Time MBA rankings by Poets&Quants, became a Top 50 business school in the Professional MBA program, climbed 21 spots to become the #33 top undergraduate program by Poets&Quants, and is the #1 undergraduate entrepreneurship program by The Princeton Review four years in a row. The Bauer College grew over 30% to reach 8,000 students, raised the retention rate to 98%, the 6-year graduation rate to 88%, and the placement rate to 98% with an average salary of over $65,000.
As Dean, Paul made diversity, equity, and inclusion a strategic priority for the Bauer College with new initiatives, such as the Center for Economic Inclusion that offers educational, economic, and financial support to residents of the traditionally-disadvantaged Third Ward neighborhood next to the University of Houston. During his tenure, many community outreach programs expanded, such as the Stimulating Urban Renewal through Entrepreneurship program that offers free consulting to more than 1,400 diverse entrepreneurs by Bauer business students, the Texas Gulf Coast Small Business Development Center (SBDC) that offers free training to small businesses, the Women in Entrepreneurship program that helps female entrepreneurs launch new businesses, and the Prison Entrepreneurship Program that has successfully graduated over 750 inmates, among many other societal initiatives.
Paul is a Distinguished Fellow of the INFORMS Information Systems Society. He won several Best Paper awards for his research, including the Sheth Foundation award for “Long-Term Contributions to Marketing” published in the Journal of Marketing (2019), the Maynard Award for the “Most Significant Contribution to Marketing” in the Journal of Marketing in 2015, the ISR Best Paper award in 2007, and the 2006 IS Publication of the Year award. He won the Best Paper award in 2012, the Runner-Up to the Best Paper of the 2005, the Best Interactive Paper in 2002, and the Best Student Paper award in 2001 from the Academy of Management.
Paul received over $3,500,000 in grants from funding agencies, such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), including a new $1,500,000 NSF grant in 2021 to study energy disruption. His research appeared journals such as Management Science, Information Systems Research (ISR), MIS Quarterly (MISQ), Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of the Association of Information Systems (JAIS), and Decision Sciences. His research spans several disciplines (information systems, data science, marketing, strategy, operations, management sciences) with emphasis on data science, artificial intelligence, business analytics, digital strategy, and research methods.
Paul also won several Reviewer awards, including the 2009 Management Science Meritorious service award, the ‘Best Reviewer’ award of the 2005 Academy of Management Conference, and the prestigious 2003 MISQ ‘Reviewer of the Year’ award as PhD student. Paul is currently Senior Editor at ISR and earlier at MISQ and JAIS. Paul also won the Best Doctoral Dissertation award of the 2004 International Conference on Information Systems.