Two NYU professors will receive a $1 million grant to explore the economic value of the internet, the Stern School of Business announced.
The National Science Foundation, an independent U.S. government agency, granted the Faculty Early Career Development award to Stern professors Anindya Ghose and Panagiotis Ipeirotis, members of the school's information, operations and management science department.
As a part of this award, which was announced last Wednesday, Ghose and Ipeirotis will each receive a research endowment of $500,000 over the next five years, with $120,526 and $80,693 already granted to the professors, respectively.
The award recognizes the activities of scientists and engineers in their early teaching careers, going to those whose research has shown the potential to integrate research and education that complements their institution's mission.
Award recipients are chosen primarily for their intellectual merit and their research's broad impact.
"Congratulations are pouring in from across the world, and I'm really thrilled," Ghose said in an e-mail.
Ghose's research identifies and measures of the economic value of information on the internet. It intends, for example, to analyze the effects of information exchanges among sellers and buyers in electronic markets like eBay and Amazon.
"Increasingly, these information exchanges are having some business impact that is being reflected in one or more economic variables that can be measured," Ghose said, citing examples such as product sales, pricing premiums and profits. He added that such variables can then be used to examine the effect of a particular information exchange.
Ipeirotis' research is concerned with how to provide more efficient information exchange.
He said that it is common for internet users to type a keyword into a search engine and receive a cascade of information that users have to organize and analyze. Ipeirotis' research then aims to develop a "structured" information-retrieval system that responds to a complex, specific information inquiry.
"Giving the power and tools to the users to quickly process the vast amount of available data and get back answers - and not more data to process - is the natural next goal," Ipeirotis said in an e-mail.
Ipeirotis said he is delighted to receive the award.
"It feels great to have the peer recognition that my research plans are promising and exciting for many people," Ipeirotis said.
Ghose said that his and Ipeirotis' research are related works that analyze the economics of internet information.
"We are collaborating on at least three projects that investigate the economic value of information on the internet," Ghose said.
With this goal in mind, the two professors plan to use the grant money to hire research assistants and buy lab equipment.
Stern dean Thomas F. Cooley said that the grant is indicative of Stern's potential in the digital information world.
"To have two Stern faculty members recognized in the same year by the National Science Foundation speaks to the Stern school's leadership in research on data mining and business intelligence, the economics of information technology and business strategy in digital markets," Cooley said in a statement.
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