Carlson School Information Systems professor receives $450,000 Career Award
What: Carlson School of Management professor receives $450,000 Career Award from the National Science Foundation
Who: Gediminas Adomavicius, assistant professor of information and decision sciences at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota
Contact: Dawn Skelly, Carlson School of Management, 612-624-8770, dskelly@csom.umn.edu

Carlson School of Management Information Systems professor receives $450,000 Career Award from the National Science Foundation

MINNEAPOLIS (Feb. 21, 2006)- Gediminas Adomavicius, assistant professor of information and decision sciences at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, has received a $450,000 Career Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to research personalization technologies that can recommend content, services, and products to individual consumers based on their personal preferences and buying habits.

Adomavicius' $450,000 grant will begin this summer and will be funded at $90,000 per year for five years. Adomavicius was recognized as one of just a handful of award recipients at leading schools of business, information technology and computer science throughout the country. Adomavicius' research will contribute to both theory and practice by developing new frameworks, models, algorithms, and implementations that provide effective ways to deal with information overload and promote access to relevant information.

"This award is a great honor for me and for our University," said Adomavicius. "Many businesses are engaged in providing personalized content, such as news feeds, or recommending products based on previous purchases, but don't take into account the context in which they are making recommendations. Take online booksellers, for example. You may have bought a textbook for a certain class, and then every time you visit the site, they recommend similar textbooks, not knowing that you may never need another book like that again. My research will help businesses better understand their customers and help individuals deal with the vast amounts of data they encounter when making decisions."

Rob Kauffman, chair of the Carlson School's Department of Information and Decision Sciences, said personalization technologies are increasingly important in our knowledge-intensive world, where new information is created at breakneck speed. "We need these technologies to help companies navigate huge amounts of data that exist in customer relationship management systems," Kauffman said. "We are proud that the NSF has chosen to recognize Gediminas with its prestigious Career Award for junior faculty researchers. He's at the leading edge of university efforts about how organizations can turn business intelligence into business profits."

John Fossum, acting associate dean for faculty and research at the Carlson School of Management, said the grant will help bridge the gap between these sophisticated technologies and our understanding of human behavior. "The business world is always looking to learn more about its customers, their profiles and their buying habits," Fossum said. "And consumers need help making choices. They can search the Web when they know exactly what they are looking for, but when they want recommendations that relate to certain tastes and preferences, personalization technologies are going to help them."

About the Carlson School of Management
The Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota is an AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) accredited business school with more than 4,400 students (1,700 undergraduates, 2,600 graduate students, 110 doctoral students), nine degree programs, 130 faculty, 300 staff and 46,000 alumni around the world.

The Carlson School is internationally ranked. In the April 2005 U.S. News & World Report graduate business school ranking, the Carlson School Full-Time MBA program ranked 23rd and the Carlson Executive MBA program ranked 20th. The Carlson Part-Time MBA program is ranked sixth by Forbes and the Undergraduate program ranked 12th by U.S. News & World Report. The Carlson School's Department of Information and Decision Sciences ranks seventh in the 2006 U.S. News & World Report MBA Academic Disciplines ranking and fifth in the U.S. News & World Report 2006 Undergraduate Academic Disciplines ranking.

For more information, visit carlsonschool.umn.edu.

About the National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering, with an annual budget of nearly $5.47 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 universities and institutions. Each year, NSF receives about 40,000 competitive requests for funding, and makes about 11,000 new funding awards. The NSF also awards over $200 million in professional and service contracts yearly.