Skip to main content

Research Events

Explore some of our upcoming and recent conferences, events, seminars, and workshops.

Upcoming Events

Workshop

Workshop Understanding Generative AI and Language Models: Opportunities and Challenges

  • Friday, April 24, 2026
  • 1:30 PM EDT
  • Goodes 101

This workshop introduces generative AI and large language models (LLMs), covering essential concepts such as how LLMs are constructed and operate, including embeddings, attention mechanisms, and prompting strategies.

Learn More about Workshop Understanding Generative AI and Language Models: Opportunities and Challenges
Workshop

From Exploration to Application: Using AI in Your Research (Part 2)

  • Monday, April 27, 2026
  • 11:00 AM EDT
  • Goodes 141

Following the strong interest in Part 1 of our AI workshop series, we are pleased to invite you to Part 2: From Exploration to Application, a more in-depth, hands-on session with Smith alumnus Mark Kashef, MMAI’20.

Learn More about From Exploration to Application: Using AI in Your Research (Part 2)
Seminar - Business Economics

The Two-System View of Cognition and Investor Choice

  • Friday, May 1, 2026
  • 10:00 AM EDT
  • Goodes 101

Kai Li explores how intuitive impressions and analytical reasoning interact to shape investor decisions, using livestream mutual fund promotions to reveal when emotion drives behaviour and when it is overridden by deeper scrutiny.

Learn More about The Two-System View of Cognition and Investor Choice
Seminar - Marketing

Assessing Consumer Visual Interest and Its Association with Brand Premium: An Empirical Approach Using Image and Text Search Data

  • Friday, May 1, 2026
  • 10:00 AM EDT
  • Goodes 100

Abhishek Borah introduces a novel data-driven measure of consumer visual interest to show how attention captured through images and design translates into stronger brand premium and pricing power.

Learn More about Assessing Consumer Visual Interest and Its Association with Brand Premium: An Empirical Approach Using Image and Text Search Data
Event

Canadian Healthcare Optimization Workshop (CHOW)

  • Sunday, June 7, 2026
  • 8:30 AM EDT
  • Goodes 151

CHOW is a one-day, in-person event designed to bring together leading researchers, healthcare executives, and analytics practitioners to advance the science and practice of healthcare optimization. CHOW offers a focused forum for exchanging ideas, sharing cutting-edge research, and exploring real-world applications aimed at improving health system performance.

Event

67th Annual Canadian Operational Research Society Conference

  • Monday, June 8, 2026
  • 8:30 AM EDT
  • Queen's University

CORS 2026 will bring together researchers, practitioners, and industry leaders for insightful talks, networking opportunities, and cutting-edge discussions in operations research and analytics. Registration closes May 24.

Register Now

Past Events

Seminar

AI Adoption, Incentives, and Firm Value in General Equilibrium

  • Friday, April 24, 2026
  • 10:00 AM EDT
  • Goodes 102

Speaker: Gilles Chemla, Imperial College London

Gilles Chemla’s research analyzes how AI adoption reshapes incentive structures, labour market dynamics, and firm value, highlighting trade-offs between productivity gains and worker outcomes.

Seminar

Profiling Stakeholder Trade-Offs in Product Design with a Demand-Side Measure

  • Friday, April 24, 2026
  • 10:00 AM EDT
  • Goodes 103

Speaker: Michael Luchs, William and Mary

Michael presents research introducing a new five-dimensional, demand-side framework that helps firms understand how consumers perceive product design trade-offs across performance, repairability, innovation, sustainability, and aesthetics and how these perceptions influence purchasing decisions and willingness to pay.

Seminar

Open-Source and Small Language Models for Education and Research

  • Friday, April 24, 2026
  • 9:30 AM EDT
  • Goodes 101

Speaker: Raghava Rao Mukkamala, Copenhagen Business School

Raghava Rao Mukkamala’s research explores how open-source and small language models enable more accessible, transparent, and ethically grounded applications of AI in education and research.

Seminar

How Do Households Suppress The Price of Tail Risk?

  • Monday, April 20, 2026
  • 10:00 AM EDT
  • Goodes 100

Speaker: Laurent Calvet, SKEMA Business School

Laurent Calvet’s research examines how household demand for structured financial products shapes volatility pricing and reduces the cost of insuring against extreme market risks.

Seminar

Surgeon-in-the-Loop Decision-Aware Learning for Operating Room Planning

  • Friday, April 17, 2026
  • 1:00 PM EDT
  • Goodes 304

Speaker: Borzou Rostami, University of Alberta

Borzou Rostami’s research explores decision-aware AI models that integrate surgeon input to improve operating room scheduling and reduce healthcare system inefficiencies.

Seminar

Erewhon, Erewhevery, and AI-migraines: Toward a Conceptualization of Imaginary Governance

  • Friday, April 17, 2026
  • 11:00 AM EDT
  • Goodes 100

Speaker: Matt Bamber, York University

Matt Bamber’s research explores the concept of “imaginary governance” to better understand how emerging technologies and narratives shape financial reporting and oversight.

Seminar

Finance Seminar

  • Friday, April 17, 2026
  • 10:00 AM EDT
  • Goodes 102

Speaker: Laurent Calvet, Skema Business School

Seminar

The Impact of Supply-side Subscriptions on the Gig Economy

  • Friday, April 17, 2026
  • 10:00 AM EDT
  • Goodes 103

Speaker: Bhoomija Ranjan, Monash University

Bhoomija Ranjan’s research investigates how supply-side subscription models reshape provider behaviour, platform dynamics, and performance outcomes in gig economy marketplaces.

Seminar

On the Design of an AI-Human Service System with Strategic Customers

  • Friday, April 10, 2026
  • 1:00 PM EDT
  • Goodes 304

Speaker: Ricky-Roet Green, Rochester University

Analyzes how different AI–human service system designs influence customer behaviour, system efficiency, and overall social welfare.

Research Talk

Resiliency of Sustainable Investments: Evidence from the 2024 U.S. Election and 2025 Liberation Day Tariffs Announcements

  • Friday, April 10, 2026
  • 10:00 AM EDT
  • Goodes 304

Speaker: Dhruv Baswal, Smith School of Business

Examines how political events and policy signals shape the performance and resilience of ESG-focused investments during periods of market disruption.

Workshop

Exploring AI to Support Your Research

  • Tuesday, April 7, 2026
  • 12:00 PM EDT
  • Goodes 141

Speaker: Mark Kashef, MMAI'20

Smith Faculty are invited to join us for a hands-on workshop exploring how AI can support aspects of the research process, led by Smith Alum, Mark Kashef, MMAI'20.

Seminar

The Cost of Buying American

  • Tuesday, March 31, 2026
  • 4:00 PM EDT
  • Goodes 100

Speaker: Bingjing Li, University of Hong Kong

Bingjing’s paper evaluates U.S. Buy American procurement provisions and finds that while they have created jobs, tighter restrictions are likely to create fewer jobs at a higher cost.

Seminar

Dynamic Control of Multiclass Multi-Episode Service Systems with Waiting Time Dependent Transitions

  • Friday, March 27, 2026
  • 10:00 AM EDT
  • Goodes 304

Speaker: Nasser Barjesteh, University of Toronto

This seminar presents a model of a multi‑class service system where waiting times and service rates affect outcomes and congestion, and shows how a Brownian‑based control policy can improve scheduling, service rate decisions, and long‑run performance compared with static or myopic approaches.

Research Talk

Two Trees and a Gardener: Asset Pricing with Real Capital Flows

  • Friday, March 27, 2026
  • 10:00 AM EDT
  • Goodes 304

Speaker: Evan Jo, Smith School of Business

This seminar introduces a two‑sector production economy with a venture capital firm that endogenously adjusts sectoral capital, showing how capital imbalances drive variation in discount factors and returns, and presenting evidence that real capital‑flow factors capture these risks in the cross‑section of stock returns.

Seminar

From PhD to Academic Leader: Forging a Coherent and Resilient Trajectory

  • Friday, March 27, 2026
  • 9:30 AM EDT
  • Goodes 100

Speaker: Josianne Marson, Windsor University

In her seminar, Dr. Marsan will reflect on her evolution as a researcher and academic leader, with particular attention to issues facing PhD students and early career faculty.

EDII Lecture Series

“Make Geography Great Again”: Advancing DEI by Bridging Psychological Theories with Spatial-Environmental Principles in Neighbourhood Studies

  • Wednesday, March 25, 2026
  • 2:00 PM EDT

Speaker: Chan-Hoong Leong, Nanyang Technological University

This presentation offers a spatially grounded perspective to comprehending how the built and social environments shape diversity, multicultural inclusion, and psychological wellbeing.

Seminar

Enhancing Developmental Information Content: The Role of Social Curiosity in Promoting Advice Quality

  • Tuesday, March 24, 2026
  • 10:00 AM EDT
  • Goodes 101

Speaker: Hayley Blunden, American University

Receiving high-quality developmental input, such as advice and feedback, is central to employee learning and performance. Yet the guidance people provide often falls short of its potential.

Seminar

When Less Is More: Using Control Limits to Improve Access, Quality, and Efficiency in Telemedicine Diagnosis Crowdsourcing

  • Friday, March 20, 2026
  • 1:00 PM EDT
  • Goodes 100

Speaker: Guangwen Kong, Temple University

This seminar looks at how a large telemedicine platform manages physician participation in a one‑to‑many “diagnosis tournament,” showing that commission-based pricing can lead to inefficient capacity allocation and requires the platform to set prices below a centralized benchmark.

Seminar

Aggregate Risk and Industrial Policy

  • Friday, March 20, 2026
  • 10:00 AM EDT
  • Goodes 102

Speaker: Adolfo de Motta, McGill University

We explore the diversification of a small open economy where the labor specialization choices of its residents determine its exposure to sectoral shocks. The presence of demand-driven externalities introduces the possibility of coordination failures.

Seminar

Leader Felt Trust Deficit: A Path to Abusive Supervision via Social-Evaluative Shame

  • Friday, March 20, 2026
  • 10:00 AM EDT
  • Goodes 304

Speaker: Tony Kong, University of Colorado Boulder

This seminar examines how leaders’ felt trust deficits — the sense that a follower does not fully trust them — can be appraised as a threat to their social self, triggering social‑evaluative shame and leading to abusive supervision as a defensive response. It also highlights how perceived status threat from colleagues intensifies this process.

Seminar

When Long-Run Trends are Unknown: Bond Pricing Implications

  • Friday, March 13, 2026
  • 10:00 AM EDT
  • Goodes 304

Speaker: Guillaume Roussellet, McGill University

Seminar

The Rule of the Strongest and the Prospects for Global Free Trade

  • Friday, March 6, 2026
  • 11:30 AM EST
  • Goodes 100

Speaker: Antoine Noël, Laval University

Seminar

Standardizing a Non-GAAP Metric: Investor Reliance on FASB-defined EBITD

  • Friday, March 6, 2026
  • 11:00 AM EST
  • Goodes 305

Speaker: Brian White, Cornell University

Seminar

Unreadable Political Trades

  • Friday, March 6, 2026
  • 10:00 AM EST
  • Goodes 304

Speaker: Xiaoyun Yu, SAIF - Shanghai Jao Tong

Workshop

The Art of Responding to Reviewer Comments

  • Friday, February 27, 2026
  • 1:30 PM EST
  • Goodes 101

Speaker: Alec Cram, University of Waterloo

In this workshop, Alec Cram, Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo, will share hard-won insights on how to respond effectively to peer review comments.

Seminar

Delayed Allocation in Marginalized Flow Models for Weakly Coupled Markov Decision Processes

  • Friday, February 27, 2026
  • 1:00 PM EST
  • Goodes 304

Speaker: Andre Cire, University of Toronto

Seminar

Aligning AI Decision-Making with Organizational Values: Synthetic Experiments in a Multi-Stakeholder Utility Framework

  • Friday, February 27, 2026
  • 11:30 AM EST
  • Goodes 103

Speaker: Joshua Foster, Western University

Seminar

From Listings to Delistings: How Do Customer Information Shifts Affect Analysts’ Forecasts for Suppliers

  • Friday, February 27, 2026
  • 11:00 AM EST
  • Goodes 305

Speaker: Stephannie Larocque, University of Notre Dame

Seminar

The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself: The Influence of Instability in the Cybersecurity Fear Control Process

  • Friday, February 27, 2026
  • 9:30 AM EST
  • Goodes 304

Speaker: Alec Cram, Waterloo University

Seminar

A Human Rights Approach to Business Responsibility

  • Friday, February 6, 2026
  • 10:00 AM EST
  • Goodes 304

Speaker: Harry Van Buren, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Event

Run Like a Girl: An Afternoon with Catherine McKenna

  • Wednesday, January 21, 2026
  • 3:30 PM EST
  • Goodes Commons, Smith School of Business

Through a dynamic fireside chat, Catherine McKenna will share insights from her global advocacy work and her experiences championing climate action and women’s leadership.

Seminar

From Self-Expression to Self-Incrimination: Consumer Responses to Data Reinterpretation Threats in a Surveillance Era

  • Friday, January 16, 2026
  • 10:00 AM EST
  • Goodes 100

Speaker: Nita Umashankar, San Diego State

Workshop

Authentic Ambition: Branding & Strategy for Emerging Scholars

  • Thursday, January 15, 2026
  • 1:00 PM EST
  • Goodes 100

Speaker: Nita Umashankar, San Diego State University

This workshop helps graduate students and faculty build a personal brand rooted in rigour, relevance, and responsibility. Participants will learn how to present themselves authentically, develop strategic professional identities, and network with confidence while staying true to their values. Award-winning teaching and research insights make the session practical, approachable, and energizing.

Seminar

Balancing Act: Monetary Policy Responses to Natural Disasters

  • Friday, January 9, 2026
  • 10:00 AM EST
  • Goodes 100

Speaker: Tatjana Dahlhaus, Bank of Canada

Seminar

Seminar with Masakazu Ishihara

  • Friday, December 5, 2025
  • 10:30 AM EST
  • Goodes 302

Speaker: Masakazu Ishihara, NYU

Seminar

Seminar with Aydin Alptekinoglu

  • Friday, November 28, 2025
  • 1:00 PM EST
  • Goodes 100

Speaker: Aydin Alptekinoglu, Penn State

Seminar

Seminar with Tisha King

  • Friday, November 28, 2025
  • 11:00 AM EST
  • Goodes 302

Speaker: Tisha King, Waterloo University

Seminar

Analytics Seminar with Jonathan Helm

  • Friday, November 21, 2025
  • 1:00 PM EST
  • Goodes 100

Speaker: Jonathan Helm, Indiana State

Seminar

Seminar with Dushyant Vyas

  • Friday, November 21, 2025
  • 11:00 AM EST
  • Goodes 100

Speaker: Dushyant Vyas, University of Toronto

Seminar

Seminar with Ting Xu

  • Friday, November 21, 2025
  • 10:00 AM EST
  • Goodes 102

Speaker: Ting Xu, University of Toronto

Seminar

Digital Transformation Seminar with Raghava Rao

  • Friday, November 21, 2025
  • 9:00 AM EST
  • Goodes 100

Speaker: Raghava Rao, Copenhagen Business School

Seminar

Seminar with Anthony Klotz

  • Thursday, November 20, 2025
  • 10:30 AM EST
  • Goodes 100

Speaker: Anthony Klotz, University College London

Seminar

Seminar with Majid Majzoubi

  • Friday, November 14, 2025
  • 11:00 AM EST
  • Goodes 302

Speaker: Majid Majzoubi, York University

Seminar

Seminar with Ziwei Zhao

  • Thursday, November 13, 2025
  • 10:00 AM EST
  • Goodes 100

Speaker: Ziwei Zhao, Lausanne

Event

Smith Research Gala

  • Friday, November 7, 2025
  • 1:30 PM EST
  • Malting Tower, Tett Centre
Seminar

Seminar with Scott Asay

  • Friday, November 7, 2025
  • 11:00 AM EST
  • Goodes 302

Speaker: Scott Asay, Iowa State

Seminar

Strategy Seminar with Forrest Briscoe

  • Friday, October 24, 2025
  • 10:00 AM EDT
  • Goodes 102

Speaker: Forrest Brisco, Cornell University

Seminar

Analytics Seminar with Stefan Nickel

  • Friday, October 17, 2025
  • 1:00 PM EDT
  • Goodes 302

Speaker: Stefan Nickel, KIT

Seminar

Analytics Seminar with Kevin Shang

  • Friday, October 10, 2025
  • 1:00 PM EDT
  • Goodes 302

Speaker: Kevin Shang, Duke University

Seminar

Seminar with Ela Veresiu

  • Friday, October 3, 2025
  • 10:00 AM EDT
  • Goodes 100

Speaker: Ela Veresiu, York University

Seminar

Digital Transformation with Gabriele Piccoli

  • Friday, October 3, 2025
  • 9:00 AM EDT
  • Goodes 302

Speaker: Gabriele Piccoli, Louisiana State

Seminar

Marketing Seminar with Suzanne Shu

  • Friday, September 26, 2025
  • 10:00 AM EDT
  • Goodes 100

Speaker: Suzanne Shu, Cornell University

Event

Faculty Writing Retreat and Lunch

  • Friday, September 12, 2025
  • 11:00 AM EDT
  • Goodes 302
Seminar

Digital Transformation Seminar with Eivor Oborn

  • Friday, September 12, 2025
  • 10:00 AM EDT
  • Goodes 100

Speaker: Eivor Oborn, Warwick Business School

Event

Research Excellence Awards

  • Tuesday, September 2, 2025
  • 1:30 PM EDT
  • Recital Hall, Isabel Bader Centre

Celebrate the outstanding achievements of faculty and PhD students.

EDII Lecture Series

Disasters, Vulnerable Groups and Responsibilisation: Narratives, Social Dramas, and Social Policy

  • Wednesday, August 27, 2025
  • 11:00 AM EDT

Speaker: Mustafa Özbilgin, Brunel University of London

Disasters are "total social facts," reflecting intertwined social, natural, and technological impacts shaped by dominant narratives that influence policy and public perception. Supporting individuals’ well-being post-disaster requires governance that is fair, collaborative, and fosters co-ownership among diverse stakeholders to integrate human, natural, and technological considerations.

EDII Lecture Series

“F” That!: Dealing with Fear and Fatigue Surrounding D.E.I. in the Classroom

  • Wednesday, August 27, 2025
  • 9:00 AM EDT

Speaker: Lynn Bowes-Sperry, California State University East Bay

Given the current politically divisive climate in many countries, it shouldn't be surprising that many instructors and students are experiencing fear and/or fatigue with regard to the topic of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the classroom. My goal for this session is to decrease the fear and fatigue associated with DEI in the classroom while increasing the potential for fun.

Workshop

Corporate Finance Theory Workshop

  • Saturday, June 14, 2025
  • 10:00 AM EDT
  • Goodes 102

The Corporate Finance Theory workshop brings together theorists working in corporate finance, broadly defined, from leading Canadian universities. The workshop involves several presentations of early-stage work so that presenters can benefit from comments and suggestions from the audience.

Seminar

Unmasking the Greenium with Machine Learning

  • Friday, May 30, 2025
  • 10:00 AM EDT
  • Goodes 304

Speaker: Si Cheng, University of Toronto

This paper applies machine learning to impute ESG ratings. Unlike traditional methods, most machine-learning-imputed ratings effectively predict future ESG incidents when ratings are unobserved. While no single method is superior, a composite measure integrating all machine learning approaches provides the most robust estimates. We find a negative greenium of −1.70% annually across all stocks, with a stronger elect among uncovered stocks. Using MSCI ESG coverage expansion as an exogenous shock, we find that ESG coverage reduces newly covered firms' cost of capital by 0.47% annually. Our findings highlight the value of imputed ESG ratings in investment decisions and capital allocation.

EDII Lecture Series

The Inclusion Tax: The Price of the Ticket in White Spaces

  • Monday, February 12, 2024
  • 10:00 AM EST

Speaker: Tsedale Melaku, CUNY Baruch

Through in-depth semi-structured interviews of twenty Black women lawyers, Dr. Tsedale's article demonstrates how systemic racism is deeply entrenched in white spaces, preventing a genuine and effective path to diversity, equity, and full inclusion. Moreover, it theorizes how emotional, cognitive, financial, and relational labors amount to an inclusion tax levied against Black women professionals in white spaces.

EDII Lecture Series

Shared Inequities: An Alternative Framework for Racial Justice in the Workplace

  • Tuesday, February 7, 2023
  • 9:00 AM EST

Speaker: Cedric Dawkins, York University

Racial injustice places a burden on an ethically sensitive society and poses questions as to how we bear it. While society confronts this enduring racial inequity, I argue that it is morally fitting that all would share in its burdens. Through the concept of shared inequity, the paper discounts unqualified notions of merit and win–win convergences and holds forth the supposition that fairly apportioning the burdens of a fraught racial past (and present) is an idea whose time has come.

EDII Lecture Series

Including Behavior

  • Friday, August 19, 2022
  • 1:00 PM EDT

Speaker: Hans van Dijk, Tilburg University

Mundane behaviors can have a large impact on experiences of inclusion and exclusion. Following a simulation modelling this effect, participants will reflect on how inclusive the workplace, culture, and organization is, and what participants can do themselves to foster inclusion.

EDII Lecture Series

Decolonize Your Class

  • Friday, August 19, 2022
  • 11:00 AM EDT

Speaker: Alexis Smith Washington, Oklahoma State University

Reflect, reimagine and reconstruct course syllabi so that they foster students’ engagement, validation and sense of belonging with you, in the classroom and with the class material. Engage in some reflective exercises to examine their own identities and positionality, and then move into more critical analysis of course design (aka: interrogating practices and policies; reconstructing for equity & inclusion).

EDII Lecture Series

Staying Ready: Engaging in Difficult Conversations about EDI in the Classroom

  • Friday, August 19, 2022
  • 9:00 AM EDT

Speaker: Stephanie Creary, Wharton School of Management

Enhance your “EDI readiness” for engaging in both planned and unplanned conversations about EDI in the classroom. Familiarize yourself with some difficult EDI teaching scenarios and begin to develop effective language and other strategies that will enable to you to more actively and thoughtfully guide students toward discovery and learning.