Rate My Professor Sulin Ba

Sulin Ba serves as Dean of the Driehaus College of Business and Kellstadt Graduate School of Business at DePaul University, as well as Professor of Information Systems within the Business & Economics faculty. She holds a PhD in Management Information Systems and an MS in Library and Information Sciences from the University of Texas at Austin, along with a BS in Library and Information Sciences from Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China. Ba assumed her role at DePaul in July 2022 following an accomplished tenure at the University of Connecticut School of Business, where she held the Treibick Family Endowed Chair, served as Associate Dean of Academic and Research Support, and acted as Executive Director of the Connecticut Information Technology Institute. She commenced her academic career as an assistant professor at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business and has undertaken visiting appointments as Honorary Distinguished Professor at Fudan University School of Management in Shanghai, China, and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Mannheim, Germany.

Ba's research centers on digital platforms, online communities, and small business growth in the digital economy, encompassing crowdsourcing platform design, online word-of-mouth, digital health communities, and trust-building mechanisms in electronic markets. She has authored numerous publications in premier journals, including "Evidence of the Effect of Trust Building Technology in Electronic Markets: Price Premiums and Buyer Behavior" (MIS Quarterly, 2002), "Technology Adaptation: The Case of a Computer-Supported Inter-Organizational Virtual Team" (MIS Quarterly, 2000), "Establishing online trust through a community responsibility system" (Decision Support Systems, 2001), and "Promotional marketing or word-of-mouth? Evidence from online restaurant reviews" (Information Systems Research, 2013). Her scholarship has amassed over 11,000 citations according to Google Scholar. In 2024, Ba was honored with the INFORMS Information Systems Society Distinguished Fellow Award for her research contributions, mentorship, and service. She has held senior editor positions at MIS Quarterly (2013–2017), Production and Operations Management, and Decision Support Systems. Additionally, Ba serves on the boards of the CFA Society of Chicago, the Greenwood Project, and Innovation Place Hartford, and has testified before the U.S. House Committee on Small Business.