Faculty & Instructors
A Powerful Interdisciplinary Experience
Smith School of Business and Queen’s School of Computing have partnered to deliver the Master of Digital Product Management. You will be learning from an outstanding faculty team comprised of some of the best management educators in North America. Our faculty members have worked together to produce a curriculum that is both comprehensive and integrated. The professors who teach in the program include award-winning teachers, widely published researchers, and best-selling authors.
They are experts at merging theory and application to guide students in the classroom and beyond. Using a blend of case studies, briefings, class discussions, and experiential learning, your professors will create a classroom experience that is energized and exciting. Their combined strengths and expertise in teaching, research and student engagement will deliver an extraordinary experience.
Faculty and instructors subject to change.
“As a member of the inaugural class, I am proud to say we raised the bar, as the leaders and faculty went the extra mile within a phenomenal learning environment, with the highest professionalism, and the most compassionate interpersonal cultivation of care. The rigor of the program was challenging but encouraging, with significant learning resources offered—more than I could have ever imagined! Possibly, the best attribute of the program was the quality of the faculty and the diversity of the students—both culturally and professionally. The program pushed me to grow as a mentor and leader. I would give my highest recommendation to this program.”
Founder, AsteriskRD Inc.
Founder, Blakkart Inc.
Abayomi Baiyere is an Associate Professor & Distinguished Research Fellow of Digital Technology at Smith School of Business; a Research Affiliate at MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research; and a visiting scholar at the University of Turku. Before joining academia, he worked for companies such as SAP, ABN AMRO (Dialogues Incubator), and as an entrepreneur.
His research looks at digitalization issues from an organizational perspective - with a focus on digital transformation, digital/disruptive innovations as well as digital work. His research takes a design science and qualitative methods orientation, among others. He is currently among scholars leading the charge to chart a path for digital X-themed research in the information systems discipline and beyond.
He currently serves as an associate editor of Information Systems Journal - ISJ and on the editorial board of Information and Organization. He serves (or has served) as a guest editor on special issues in several journals. He currently leads the Digital Disruption and Digital Transformation Special Interest Group of ISPIM, and he leads the “Theory of Digital Theme” in the digitalization department of CBS. He also holds a leadership position in the IFPI 9.1 group. He has served as an executive member of the OCIS (now CTO) division of the Academy of Management (AoM), among other leadership roles.
Kathryn is an Associate Professor and Distinguished Faculty Fellow in Digital Technology at Smith School of Business. She is the Director of the newly established Master of Digital Product Management, a professional Smith graduate program offered in partnership with the Queen’s School of Computing.
Kathryn is a thought leader in technology-induced change and has pioneered programs across MBA and executive programs at Smith since she arrived in 2003. She has co-authored two books and dozens of articles based on work with hundreds of organizations in North America. Her work has been influential in helping companies of all sizes improve productivity and performance by enhancing digital leadership, innovation, and management practices that uncover new opportunities and bring digital initiatives to scale.
On the global scale, Kathryn is the co-founder of the Association of Information Systems (AIS) special interest group in Digital Innovation, Transformation and Entrepreneurship, an international academic community that helps to shape research and thought leadership in this area of study.
Dr. Jacob Brower is an Academic Co-Director - Business (Master of Digital Product Management), Associate Professor & Distinguished Teaching Fellow of Marketing at Smith School of Business and has been a Marketing Mentor at the Dunin-Deshpande Queen’s Innovation Centre since 2019. His research interests are primarily in the domain of corporate social responsibility, sustainability and social impact, and his work in these domains has appeared in several high impact international business journals. His most recent research, which has been awarded two federal Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) grants, uses quantitative analytics to explore the optimization of mobile well-being applications for user-level well-being and engagement as well as driving KPIs for our partner organizations. His work has been presented at several national and international conferences and has won the "best paper" award at the American Marketing Association's 2010 Marketing and Public Policy Conference.
Jacob joined the faculty at Smith in 2011 after earning his PhD in Marketing Strategy at the University of Texas at Austin. He also holds an MS in Marketing from the University of Texas at Austin, an MA in Economics from Syracuse University, and a BA in Economics at the State University of New York College at Geneseo. Prior to studying for his PhD, he worked as a research analyst for a boutique marketing consultancy serving Fortune 500 clients including IBM, FedEx, and AT&T, focusing on Brand Management, Service Development, and Customer Retention and Experience Management.
As Managing Director of Management Information & Analytics for Scotiabank, Global Banking and Markets, Mike is responsible for the Management Information Systems used across the wholesale banking division. As part of the group Mike leads the Data Science and Analytics group responsible for applying advanced analytics to enhance customer knowledge, improve customer focus and business line performance for Scotia’s corporate customers.
Mike joined Scotiabank in 2005 as a Senior Manager in Group Treasury and subsequently moved to Global Analytics & Financial Engineering before heading Management Information & Analytics. Over the past 10 years Mike has been involved with developing systems and analytics across the trade floor and subsequently expanding responsibilities to include Corporate and Investment Banking, Global Transaction Banking and Commercial. Before Scotiabank he worked at Deloitte in both Audit and the Capital Markets Group.
Mike holds degrees in Commerce and a Master’s in Management Analytics both from Queen’s University. He is also a Chartered Accountant in Canada and a Certified Public Accountant in the State of Illinois.
Nicholas Graham is a Professor of Computer Science at Queen’s University specializing in Human-Computer Interaction, Game Design, and Accessible Computing. His research focuses on the development of exercise video games bringing physical activity and social interaction to children with neurodevelopmental disorders, and on the use of augmented reality in the development of an educational game in medieval history. His work is highly multi-disciplinary, including collaborations with medical doctors, kinesiologists, historians, geologists, and teachers. Dr. Graham believes that computing forms the glue that brings together diverse stakeholders to create compelling, viable, and successful digital products.
He is member and former chair of IFIP Working Group 2.7/13.4 on User Interface Engineering and has served as general or program chairs of leading international conferences in Human-Computer Interaction (INTERACT), game design (CHI PLAY), and Usability Engineering (EICS). He brings digital product management experience through his earlier role as VP Research and Development for Namzak Labs. Dr. Graham was awarded the Howard Stavely Teaching Award in recognition of teaching excellence in 2010-2011.
Ahmed E. Hassan is an IEEE fellow, an ACM SIGSOT Influential Educator, an IEEE TCSE Distinguished Educator, an NSERC Steacie Fellow, and a Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Software Analytics at the School of Computing at Queen’s University, Canada. Hassan is a member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada, Canada’s most senior and prestigious academic society. A 2020 Elsevier report notes Hassan as the world's most prolific Software Engineering researcher in the past decade.
Early tools and techniques developed by Dr. Hassan's team are already integrated into products used by millions of users worldwide. Dr. Hassan industrial experience includes helping architect the Blackberry wireless platform at RIM\BlackBerry, and working for IBM Research at the Almaden Research Lab and the Computer Research Lab at Nortel Networks. Dr. Hassan is the named inventor of patents at several jurisdictions around the world including the United States, Europe, India, Canada, and Japan.
Hamilton Hernandez is Manager of User Experience Research (UXR) at Unity Technologies where he leads a team of researchers that advocates for user-centric product development, helping product managers, designers, marketing managers, engineers and business leads make well-informed business and design decisions. He has diverse experience in multiple areas of UX research, design and strategy from his tenureship at the UX consulting firm Akendi, where he worked with clients from a wide set of industries; research and design of fun technologies for the rehabilitation of children at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital; and the gamification of exercise considering accessibility issues via his Ph.D. in Computer Science at the School of Computing in Queen's University. Dr. Hernandez was also an assistant professor in the Systems and Computers Engineering program at University of Quindio, Colombia where he taught diverse courses in computer science and conducted research in Human-Computer Interaction.
A Product Cybersecurity Analyst at Magna International, dedicated to shaping the future of safe and secure autonomous vehicles. Accomplished scientist receiving the Ph.D. research achievement award and obtaining my Ph.D. degree in cybersecurity from Queen’s University.
I specialize in seamlessly integrating robust cybersecurity measures during the early stages of software development, proactively preventing cyberattacks. My expertise in cybersecurity extends across various domains, encompassing security design, vulnerability identification, and risk assessment in industries such as automotive, IoT, finance, and governmental sectors.
As a professional software and security engineering scientist, I have made significant contributions to the field through several publications in reputable venues and hold a patent.
Anton Ovchinnikov research is primarily in the area of behavioural operations, a sub-field of management science that integrates the nuanced understanding of human behaviour into the study of how organizations operate. Current projects, for example, deal with behavioural issues in markdown optimization, procurement and customer loyalty. Another research focus is sustainable operations; he is working on several projects relating to remanufacturing and studies incentives for green technology adoption.
Named a top-10 digital marketing influencer, Deborah O’Malley, is a Google Analytics-certified marketer with a Master’s of science degree from Queen’s University.
Her research work applied behavioral economic and marketing psychology principles to increase attention and recall to persuasive messages. Her findings have been published in six prestigious peer-reviewed journals and are a source inspiration for digital marketers, worldwide.
Enjoying a successful career in marketing communications, today, Deborah applies her specialized skillset towards optimizing and A/B testing websites that market digital products.
She’s founded the go-to A/B test case study resource website, GuessTheTest, and has produced, analyzed, and published hundreds of client A/B test case studies, giving her a rich perspective on what works, and doesn’t, in digital product marketing.
Through her client-side consulting company, ConvertExperts, Deborah puts theory into practice, conducting data-driven analyses to optimize client’s product marketing websites and improve their performance.
Tadeusz Stach has extensive industry experience in product design, specializing in qualitative and quantitative user research. He is fascinated by the intersection between humans and technology and strives to gain deep user insights in order to deliver user experiences that are usable, valuable, and effective. Tadeusz holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Queen’s University. His research in human-computer interaction focused on exercise video games, having published in top conferences in the field, including Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) and the International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (INTERACT).
Yuan Tian is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Queen’s University, leading the Reliable and Intelligent Software Engineering research lab (RISE). Dr. Tian has worked extensively on automated software engineering and intelligent software project management. Prior to joining Queen’s, Dr. Tian worked at the Living Analytics Research Centre (LARC) of Singapore Management University, which is mainly funded by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Singapore to undertake research in data analysis, and develop innovative analytic methodologies, technologies, and system platforms. Dr. Tian currently holds an NSERC research grant (2019-2024) titled “Reliable and Explainable Recommender Systems for Efficient Software Development.” Her work on bug severity prediction won the SANER 2022 Most Influential Paper (MIP) Award. Dr. Tian’s automated bug fixing patch identification work has attracted industry attention. RISE lab is currently focusing on developing tools to support automated management of technical debts and workflows in open-source software projects. Contact y.tian@queensu.ca. More information at https://sophiaytian.com/.