Michael Prietula

Professor of Information Systems & Operations Management Emory University, Goizueta Business School

  • Atlanta GA

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Biography

Michael J. Prietula (PhD, MPH) is Professor in GBS and in the Rollins School of Public Health. Dr. Prietula holds a PhD in Information Systems (minors in Computer Science & Psychology) from the University of Minnesota, and a Master of Public Health (MPH) from the University of Florida. He was an AI research scientist at Honeywell's Aerospace Systems & Research Center, on the faculties of Dartmouth College, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Florida, and was department chair at the Johns Hopkins University with an adjunct appointment in the JHU School of Medicine. He is an External Research Scholar at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, which develops pioneering technologies to leverage and extend human capabilities via Artificial Intelligence & Robotics.

He has published such journals as the Management Science, Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, Cognitive Science, Harvard Business Review, Journal of Organizational Design, Organization Science, Biosecurity & Bioterrorism, Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, ORSA Journal on Computing, Applied Artificial Intelligence, JMIR mHealth & uHealth, Human Factors, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, Computers in Human Behavior, PLoS One, Brain Connectivity, and the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. He has best paper awards from the Hawaii International Conference of Systems Sciences, the International Conference on Global Defense & Business Continuity, the International Conference of Information Systems, and the Academy of Management. His papers were in the top 5 downloaded from Organization Science (2014), the most downloaded paper from Brain Connectivity (2017), and in top 10 downloaded from JMIR mHealth & uHealth (2016-2019). He has edited two books, Computational Organization Theory (with K. Carley) and Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups (with K. Carley & L. Gasser). He has been funded by Emory's Global Health Institute, the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, the National Science Foundation, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Office of Naval Research, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Michael is a musician, a PADI diving instructor, and was also a stage manager and served on the board of directors for a community theatre in New Hampshire while teaching at Dartmouth.

Education

University of Minnesota

PhD

Information Systems

University of Florida

MPH

Public Health

Areas of Expertise

Human decision making
AI-Human Collaboration
UX Design‎
AI Ethics
Computational Modeling of Individuals and Groups
Public Health & Technology
Theatre, Performance & Leadership

Publications

Advice in Crisis: Principles of Organizational and Entrepreneurial Resilience

Journal of Organizational Design

S Levine, M Prietula, A Majchrzak

2023-02-27

How does (in)accurate information flow in a crisis? When facing a crisis (or preparing for one), managers often turn to peer networks, seeking advice and providing it. Scholars and executives endorse sharing knowledge and experience, especially for boosting resilience and combating crises.They believe such decentralized, peer-to-peer contact suits the ill-structured challenges organizations encounter. Yet, this endorsement overlooks a bias known as the Dunning-Kruger effect: People regularly misjudge their own and their peers’ skills. In this paper, we weave case studies and experimental evidence into a computational model examining the dynamic unfolding of information under varying assumptions, showing how organizational design can ameliorate risks of information biases. We conclude with implications for resilience, research, and practice. This research was funded in part by Goizueta's Summer Research Fund.

Using ADAPT-ITT to Modify a Telephone-Based HIV Prevention Intervention for SMS Delivery: Formative Study

JMIR Formative Research

T Davis T, RJ DiClemente RJ, M Prietula

2020-06-10

African American adolescent females are disproportionately affected by sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and HIV. Collaborating with the Rollins School of Public Health, we demonstrated how to engage user-experience (UX) methods to design and adapt a post-intervention, Given the elevated risk of STIs and HIV in African American women, there is an urgent need to identify innovative strategies to enhance the adoption and maintenance of STI and HIV preventive behaviors. Even evidence-based interventions (workshops) lose their efficacy as time passes. Post-intervention phone calls by health educators extend the effectiveness, but the use of that technology is declining for that target population. Texting is now the promising technology for extending the efficacy of the original intervention. However, little guidance in the public health literature is available for developing this type of application. SMS texting platform for health educator contact. Using a representative advisory board, iterations through design revealed critical insight into cultural components, language, and key emergent personas to help cue health educators on their responses. This research was supported by a grant from Emory University’s Global Health Institute and the Goizueta Business School’s Summer Research Fund.

Taking mHealth Forward: Examining the Core Characteristics

JMIR MHealth and UHealth

T Davis T, RJ DiClemente, M Prietula

2016-10-08

This is a review paper of the core characteristics of mobile health (mHealth) in collaboration with the Rollins School of Public Health. We assert that the relevance of these characteristics to mHealth will endure as the technology advances, so an understanding of these characteristics is essential to the design, implementation, and adoption of mHealth-based solutions. The core characteristics we discuss are (1) the penetration or adoption into populations, (2) the availability and form of apps, (3) the availability and form of wireless broadband access to the Internet, and (4) the tethering of the device to individuals. These collectively act to both enable and constrain the provision of population health in general, as well as personalized and precision individual health in particular. This work was funded in part by a grant from Emory University’s Global Health Institute. This was in the top 10 most downloaded articles from this journal in 2017-2019.

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Research Spotlight

1 min

Hurricane Season Starts June 01 – Are We Ready?

It’s that time of year again … where the warm winds of summer bring us tropical storms and hurricanes. Forecasters looking at the 2019 Atlantic Hurricane Season are predicting a slower year. It looks like El Niño is currying favor and its cooling temperatures mean less frequency of storms. So far, experts expect 12 to 14 tropical cyclones this season. Of those, five to seven could become hurricanes and two to four are predicted to become major hurricanes. But as we’ve learned from the past, it takes only one storm to devastate an area. In a previous post, Michael Prietula was featured and lent his expertise to show how communities and governments need to be prepared. Michael J. Prietula (PhD, MPH) is Professor in the Goizueta Business School and a senior faculty member in Emory's Center for Neuropolicy. He is an expert in the areas of organizations is crisis and is an expert in preparedness. He is available to speak with media, simply click on his icon to arrange an interview.

Michael Prietula

In the News

Acting workshop for business leaders to be offered at Goizueta

EmoryBusiness.com  online

2017-01-04

The module is designed and offered by the developers of the original CMU seven-week course: Professor Geoffrey Hitch of CMU and Goizueta Business School’s Michael Prietula.

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Hurricane Matthew interesting case for preparedness, leadership

EmoryBusiness.com  online

2016-10-06

Michael Prietula, a Professor of Information Systems and Operations Management at Goizueta Business School, is working in collaboration with Emory’s Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response, the University of Notre Dame and the Miami-Dade Office of Emergency Management. The study has produced a “virtual operations center” modeling tool to investigate how public and private agencies exchange information and make decisions during times of crisis.

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Professor receives funding to study disaster response

EmoryBusiness.com  online

2014-12-29

Thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation, a Goizueta Business School professor is conducting research to understand how communities plan for, and respond to, emergency events. Michael Prietula, a Professor of Information Systems and Operations Management at Goizueta, is working in collaboration with Emory’s Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response, two professors from the University of Notre Dame and the Miami-Dade Office of Emergency Management.

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