World-Renowned Faculty

Our instructors represent 20 nationalities, graduated from the world’s top universities and have extensive experience of working at companies and organizations in the region and throughout the world. You will work with members of our seven core Faculty Disciplinary Groups:

The Strategic Management Faculty Group

The group is led by Prof. Yusaf Akbar (DPhil, Sussex; MA, Collège d’Europe), who has taught executives and consulted Fortune 500 companies on five continents. It focuses on studying how the market and nonmarket sources of competitiveness drive success. Members include CEU Executive MBA Faculty Program Director Prof. Maciej Kisilowski (JSD, Yale; MBA, Insead; MPA, Princeton), Prof. Jacek Rostowski, one of Europe’s top Finance Ministers according to the Financial Times and Prof. Diana Ürge-Vorsatz, Vice-Chair of Working Group III of the UN Panel for Climate Change. Group members participate in numerous international research projects. They publish in top academic journals.

Their commentary appears in Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Politico, Foreign Policy, Haaretz and Project Syndicate.

On average, our world-renowned faculty members from this disciplinary group have more than twenty years of experience working with professional organizations, including Fortune 500 companies, and training and coaching managers in more than 40 countries.

The Data Analytics Faculty Group

The group is one of the strongest academic teams in the data analytics field in continental Europe.

It is led by Prof. Miklos Koren (PhD, Harvard), a leading specialist on the impact of technology on competitive advantage who led a European Research Grant on the patterns of flow of technology from the West to Central and Eastern Europe.

The group also includes Prof. Gabor Bekes, a co-author of one of the first textbooks on applied data analytics for managers, published by Cambridge University Press. The group also cooperates closely with CEU’s highly innovative Department of Network and Data Science, which includes Prof. Gerardo Iñiguez, a scholar, startup co-founder and videogame developer, as well as Prof. János Kertész, the author of more than 200 publications.

The Finance and Accounting Faculty Group

The group is led by Prof. Adam Zawadowski (PhD, Princeton), who moved to CEU from Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, and Prof. Andras Danis, who also has extensive experience in business education both in Europe and the United States. Other world-renowned faculty members in this group include Prof. Hui Chen from University of Zurich, who has a distinguished track record in research and executive education in accounting, both in Europe and North America, Prof. Tomy Lee (PhD, Toronto), who researches continuously pervasive over-the-counter (OTC) markets, Prof. Peter Szilagyi, who was previously on faculty at University of Cambridge Judge School of Business, and who is Editor-in-Charge of the Journal of Multinational Financial Management, and Prof. Joy Chan – one of Europe’s most effective finance instructors who specializes in training professionals with little or no financial background.

The team publishes widely in top journals, including the Journal of Corporate Finance, Quantitative Finance, and Review of Financial Studies.

They also have an average of 13 years of experience in working with executives and financial institutions throughout the world.

The Economic Analysis Faculty Group

The group, coordinated by Prof. Marc Kaufmann (PhD, Harvard; MMath, Cambridge), will train you in using rigorous models to better understand and predict market developments.

The group covers a wide variety of fast-developing economic fields. Prof. Julius Horvath is a visionary thinker on broad macroeconomic trends in Western and Eastern Europe. Prof. Sergey Lychagin pushes the frontiers of industrial economics and economic geography. Prof. Allessandro di Chiara’s research focuses on economic regulation. Prof. Andrea Weber, who was previously at the University of California at Berkeley, is one of Europe’s leading labor economists interested especially in issues of gender equality in the labor market. The Shanghai Ranking places CEU, alongside Charles University and the University of Vienna, among the top three economics faculties in the CEE region. This is reflected by group members’ highly prestigious publications.

The Leadership Development Faculty Group

The group is responsible for our proprietary CEU Leadership Program that Executive MBA participants complete as a core part of their degree. The multidisciplinary team is led by Prof. Austin Lee Nichols (PhD, Florida), one of Europe’s leading scholars on leadership, and includes organizational psychologists and sociologists, as well as philosophers, lawyers, communication and crisis management specialists.

The group delivers  a toolkit of unparalleled breadth and practicality, equipping Executive MBA participants with tools to deal with real-life leadership challenges in various organizations.

The team includes Prof. Davide Torsello (PhD, Max Planck; MSc, LSE), who publishes widely on issues of business ethics and integrity and Prof. Jean-Louis Fabiani, one of France’s top thinkers on the sociology of professional life. An important part of the program, focused on good decisions, is led by Prof. Christophe Heintz of CEU’s Department of Cognitive Science. The contributions of our researchers are supplemented by workshops and interactive sessions delivered by experienced practitioners in communication, leadership development and cultural transformation. Group members have an average of 25 years of consulting, coaching and mentorship experience.

The Innovation and Entrepreneurship Faculty Group

The group is led by Prof. Michael LaBelle who holds a Jean Monnet Chair in Energy and Innovation Studies at CEU. The group’s focus includes analyzing the role of entrepreneurship and innovation as fundamental forces for dynamism and value creation. Group members have an average of more than 17 years of hands-on experience with companies large and small and have played important roles as advisors and managers.

The world-renowned faculty group members include Prof. Christian Seelos who is a co-director of the Global Innovation for Impact Lab at Stanford University’s Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS) and one of the world’s leading scholars on social entrepreneurship.

Other group members include Achilles Georgiu, IBM’s Technology Support Services Leader.

The Marketing Faculty Group

The group includes a number of academics and practitioners interested in strategic approaches to marketing, with a special focus on digital marketing and the use of big data analytics in marketing.

The group is led by Prof. Aysu Senyuz, who combines her cutting-edge research on the role of emotions in consumer behaviour with experience working with some of the leading global companies.

World-renowned faculty members of this group include Prof. John David Branch of Ross Business School at the University of Michigan, who has received visiting professorships at forty business schools worldwide, and Eva Halasz, a sought-after consultant on integrated marketing. Another distinguished visiting faculty associated with the group is Prof. Miklos Sarvary of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business – one of the world’s leading experts on digital and platform marketing.