The Institute
Since August 2026 I serve as Managing Director of the business school's AI institute, founded in 1986 and now being repositioned around one question: what the relationship between humans and AI means for people, organizations, and society. This page is my account of where that work stands. The institute is rebuilding its board, and I am looking for senior executives who want to help shape it.
The institute is formally constituted as the Intelligent Computer Systems Research Institute, the name it has carried since 1986. That name stands.
In public, and on its own site, it goes by the AI Institute at the University of Miami Business School. The repositioning is about what the institute does, not what it is called. Everything on this page describes work in progress, in my own words, and does not speak for the university.
Why this, why now, why Miami
How AI augments, displaces, or reshapes human work is a management question. How organizations govern AI responsibly is a leadership question. How we prepare the next generation to work alongside AI is a values question. Business schools are built for those questions, and no institute has yet claimed the relationship between humans and AI as its central subject.
The institute approaches its fortieth anniversary. David Bendel Hertz founded it in 1986 as a hub for AI and management research, and that foundation is a platform. Its later posture, technical validation and verification of AI systems, read as a computer science laboratory. The repositioning returns it to what it was built for: the sociotechnical, design-oriented view of AI in organizations that defines our faculty's research, applied to adoption, transformation, governance, and impact. Augmentation over automation. Agency over abdication. Human judgment at the center.
Six commitments
Research that leads
Inquiry at the intersection of human behavior, organizational design, and artificial intelligence, in the contexts that matter most: how leaders decide, how organizations adapt, how professionals work with intelligent systems, and how those systems are governed so that they serve judgment instead of replacing it.
Industry engagement that is deep
Long-term partnerships with the industries where the human-AI question is most acute. Partners are collaborators and co-investigators, and members of a community of practice, with resources flowing in and research and applied insight flowing out.
A standard for teaching in the age of AI
Frameworks, resources, and a community of practice that help faculty teach with intention in an AI-saturated world, and that the institute shares with the wider academic community.
Research training for a new era
A home for doctoral students and junior faculty: new methods, new questions worth asking, and new standards for rigorous, relevant research when the phenomena themselves are being reshaped by AI.
Students who are ready
Programs and experiences so that every graduate of the school knows how to use AI, lead with it, govern it, and push back on it when it falls short of human values.
A contribution beyond business
Engagement with communities, policymakers, and civil society so that the benefits of AI are broadly shared and its risks honestly confronted. Miami is one of the most diverse and globally connected cities in the world; that is a responsibility.
Leadership
The institute is led by a Managing Director (me) and an Administrative Director, Nina Huang, Chair of the Department of Business Technology, under the authority of the Dean. Institute Fellows lead designated programs. Faculty affiliates across the university and senior external affiliates are being confirmed and will be named as they join.
The Industry Advisory Board, now forming
I am constituting the institute's Industry Advisory Board this fall. Its members are partners in the institute's intellectual mission: they shape the industry engagement agenda, connect research to practice, and keep the work grounded in the questions organizations are actually confronting.
- Industry leaders, founders, investors, and alumni, across industries, functions, and company sizes.
- A launch cohort of 10 to 15 members, growing to 20 to 25 as the institute matures.
- One annual meeting, held alongside the institute's annual Miami conference on AI and business, planned for February 2027.
- Three years, renewable.
- Advise on direction, open doors in their networks, contribute a speaker or a session to the conference, help identify applied research, data, and student opportunities, and bring practical insight on enterprise AI adoption.
- Personal financial contribution is not a condition of service. Sponsorship and partnership are welcome and handled separately.
If you lead an organization through this transition and would like to be considered, or want to nominate someone, write to me. A short note on who you are and why this interests you is enough.