Arun Rai, Regents’ Professor of the University System of Georgia and director of the Center for Digital Innovation at Georgia State University’s Robinson College of Business, has received the LEO Award for Lifetime Exceptional Achievement, the highest recognition in the field of information systems. The award was presented to him by the Association of Information Systems (AIS) at the International Conference on Information Systems in December 2019.
 
Established in 1999 and named for one of the first commercial applications of computing (the Lyons Electronic Office), the LEO Award is presented annually by AIS to “truly outstanding scholars or practitioners who have made exceptional global contributions in the field of information systems.”
 
The LEO Award recognizes individuals whose sustained contributions throughout their careers have had a far-reaching global impact on the field of information systems and beyond. They are role models to colleagues and students, preeminent representatives of the information systems community, and highly esteemed for their exemplary professional and personal integrity.
 
Rai is internationally renowned for advancing understanding of digital transformation of organizations and supply chains; governance of information technology investments and platform ecosystems; and deployment of digital innovations to address societal problems (such as poverty, health disparities, infant mortality, and digital inequality). His research has involved close engagement with organizations across sectors – e.g., Apollo Hospitals, China Mobile, Emory Healthcare, Gartner, Georgia-Pacific, Grady Hospital, IBM, Intel, SAP, SunTrust (now Truist), and UPS – and has been sponsored by government agencies, corporations and thought leadership forums.
 
Among the most prolific authors in the premier information systems journals over the past three decades, Rai received the AIS Fellow Award in 2010 and the INFORMS Information Systems Society Distinguished Fellow Award in 2014.
 
“Arun’s contributions have had a major global impact on the information systems field,” said Richard Phillips, dean of the Robinson College of Business. “He is widely regarded as among the top scholars in information systems and has been at the forefront of research on digital innovation and digital transformation to create value for individuals, firms, and markets. We are enormously proud his achievements are being recognized with the LEO Award, the top honor in the information systems discipline,” said Phillips.
 
Rai is editor-in-chief of MIS Quarterly, which is considered the premier scholarly journal in information systems. He has also served as senior editor or associate editor of other premier journals such as Information Systems Research and Management Science. He holds an endowed faculty position at Robinson, co-founded the Center for Digital Innovation, and has held visiting appointments at universities in Australia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, and Slovenia.