Business Insights through Text
The BIT LAB
We explore, examine, and extract consumer behavior or market insights through abundantly available, yet severely untapped text data. Via a variety of methodologies including causal inference, generative models, deep learning, neural NLP, bayesian statistics, interpretable machine learning, spanning topics such as social media analytics, digital consumer management, persuasion, platform design, innovation, human-ai collaboration, our studies are focused on providing empirical evidence and empirical generalization to develop or extend consumer behavior and market theories. In particular, we study friction and solutions in applying cutting-edge technologies to business arising from human-technology interface.
PI: Dokyun "DK" Lee
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Postdoctoral Researcher
Mohamed Zaki BalboulaDr. Mohamed Zaki Balboula is a postdoctoral researcher in the Information Systems Department at Boston University, Questrom School of Business. He also held an Assistant Professor of Accounting position at Delta University for Science & Technology- Egypt. He employs predictive models to predict corporate going concern/bankruptcy to support the auditor's judgment via rough sets theory, neural networks, and particle swarm algorithm using structured financial data. He is currently exploring ways to apply machine learning, NLP, to address various research questions in corporate finance using textual data. His research interests include corporate disclosures, environmental, social, and governance (ESG), corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate risk, and financial performance.
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Doctoral Students
Zhaoqi ChengZhaoqi Cheng is an Information Systems PhD student at Boston University, Questrom School of Business. He combines machine learning with econometrics models to explore large-scale data with text-heavy attributes, such as patent files, online forums and user reviews. He is currently working on generative models related to the representation and characterization of innovations.
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Chen JingChen Jing is a PhD student in Quantitative Marketing at Questrom School of Business, Boston University. His research interests include applying machine learning, econometrics, and statistical models to study brand communication, corporate social responsibility, and brand activism.
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Chengfeng MaoChengfeng Mao is a PhD student in Marketing at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He obtained his master's degree in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. His research interests include applying machine learning to draw business and economic insights from unstructured data, such as text, image, and network graph.
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Eric ZhouEric will be a first year quant marketing doctoral student at Wash U. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Finance and Marketing from Washington University In St. Louis and MBA from Tepper. He worked for one year at Nielsen BASES as a research analyst specializing in product innovation.
In his free time, he enjoys exercising and dancing and plans on choreographing his own piece some day! Kunhan WuKunhan Wu is a PhD student in Information Systems at Boston University, Questrom School of Business. He holds a bachelor's degree in Data Science at Northeastern University and master's degree in Information System Management at Carnegie Mellon University. He is currently working on multi-agent framework with game theory and pretrain knowledge distillation.
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Hazel Hyeseung KangHazel Hyeseung Kang is a PhD student in Information Systems at Boston University, Questrom School of Business.
She holds a bachelor's degree in Economics at Yonsei University and master's degree in Economics at Yonsei University. Her research interests include applying econometrics and machine learning to derive business insights from the voice of customers on online platforms. Nuo YuanNuo (Ben) Yuan is a Ph.D. student in the Operations and Technology Management
department at the Questrom School of Business, Boston University. His substantive research interest includes topics in the OB-OM interface (with a special focus on corporate-level DEI, environmental sustainability, and CSR), finance-OM interface, and the economics of online platforms informed by methodological tools drawn from econometrics, field/lab experimentation, and machine learning. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Political Science. |
Yuan GaoYuan Gao is a senior undergraduate student in Economics and Data Science in Beijing Normal University. His research interest lies in exploring how AI impacts the formation and diffusion of human beliefs on social media, and investigating the resulting business, economic, and social implications. Yuan will start as a first year phd student at BU in 2024 September.
Shihao YangShihao Yang is a PhD student in Information Systems at Boston University, Questrom School of Business. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Statistics and Data Science from UW-Madison and a Master of Engineering degree in DS from UCLA. His current research interests focus on AI's impact on improving information efficiency in online platforms and the use of machine learning tools to extract business insights from unstructured data on these platforms.
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Runqing (Rayna) YangRunqing (Rayna) Yang is a first-year PhD student in Business In Computer Information Systems at the University of North Texas. She holds a master's degree in Data Analytics from Boston University and previously worked as a biostatistician at a biotech company in Boston. Currently, her research focuses on multi-agent frameworks and analyzing unstructured data to discover unique business insights. In her free time, Rayna enjoys tennis, golf, and badminton, and has recently developed a passion for CrossFit.
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John Seon Keun YiJohn Seon Keun Yi is a PhD student in Computer Science at Boston University. He earned his Bachelors and Masters degrees in Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology. His research explores biases and misinformation in foundation models. Outside of research, John enjoys bouldering, weightlifting, and cooking.
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