Georgia Tech senior associate dean and IT management researcher appointed dean of UF Warrington College of Business

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Sabyasachi “Saby” Mitra, senior associate dean of faculty and research and Thomas R. Williams – Wells Fargo professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology Scheller College of Business, has been named dean of the University of Florida Warrington College of Business.

Mitra will begin his tenure as dean on August 1. He will be responsible for leading Warrington’s strategy and vision, championing its fundraising efforts, and managing its budget and personnel.

In his role as senior associate dean of faculty and research at Georgia Tech, Mitra managed all faculty, doctoral program, IT services and administrative support staff in the college. He led a collaborative and consensus-driven effort to redesign the promotion and tenure process, co-directed an effort to rationalize faculty teaching and course offerings to advance the Scheller College’s teaching and research missions, and started an effort to increase diversity in Scheller’s doctoral program.

“I am thrilled to have Saby Mitra joining the University of Florida. Saby’s extensive background in administration and scholarly work in information technology, electronic commerce and online search, among other things, make him the ideal person to lead the Warrington College of Business as it continues its upward trajectory and further expands its national and global presence,” said Joe Glover, UF provost and senior vice president for academic affairs.

Prior to his role as senior associate dean of faculty and research, Mitra served as senior associate dean of programs from 2015 to 2019, during which he was responsible for overseeing all degree and non-degree programs in the Scheller College. Mitra’s other notable achievements in this role include establishing a dual degree program (MBA-MS/Ph.D.) with the Colleges of Engineering, Computing and Design at Georgia Tech, as well as an MD-MBA dual degree program with the Morehouse School of Medicine. In a time when many full-time MBA programs face declining enrollments, Mitra led a team that facilitated the growth of Georgia Tech’s full-time MBA program since fall 2015, in addition to significantly increasing diversity of incoming classes. Mitra’s leadership also helped grow Scheller’s Executive MBA program to one of the largest in the Southeast, with approximately 120 students per year from 2016-2018. Mitra has also served as academic director for several corporate programs with Fortune 500 companies.

“The Warrington College of Business has amazing faculty, staff, students, programs and alumni,” Mitra said. “With support from the university, the state of Florida and committed alumni, the Warrington College is on its way to becoming one of the top business schools in the country. I am excited and honored to be part of that journey.”

Mitra has been with Georgia Tech for 27 years, starting as an assistant professor of information systems in 1993. He was promoted to full professor in 2012 and has held the Thomas R. Williams – Wells Fargo Professorship since 2018, teaching MBA-level courses in information technology management.

As a researcher, Mitra’s interests include IT security management, online consumer search, innovation in technology industries, the digital divide, IT outsourcing, IT governance, as well as areas of design science including optimization and artificial intelligence methods for IT infrastructure design and cloud computing. His research has appeared in top journals, including “Information Systems Research,” “Management Science,” “Journal of Marketing,” “MIS Quarterly” and “Journal of Management Information Systems.” He previously served as senior editor and associate editor of “Information Systems Research,” as well as on the editorial review board of “IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management.”

Mitra has been recognized numerous times for his research and teaching excellence, having received the Georgia Tech Brady Family Award for Research Excellence, the Runner-up Award for Best Published Paper from “Information Systems Research,” the Georgia Tech Hesburgh Award Teaching Fellowship and the MBA Elective Professor of the Year Award.

Mitra received his doctorate in business administration (management science) from the University of Iowa and his bachelor of technology degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, India.

Mitra succeeds John Kraft, who served as dean at Warrington for 30 years. During Kraft’s tenure, he grew the college’s graduate offerings from four to 26, increased its endowment from $14 million to more than $227 million, and bolstered Warrington’s presence and reputation as a global business school through its study abroad partnerships with more than 20 countries.