Ali Ahmed, Ph.D.

Ali Ahmed
  • Assistant Professor
  • Business Communication and Information Systems
  • College of Business

Ali Ahmed is an assistant professor in the Department of Information Systems of the College of Business at the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire. He received his Ph.D. in Business Administration with a concentration in Management Information Systems from the University of Massachusetts Lowell. His research focuses on policy and the economics of information security. He has extensively studied bug bounty, vulnerability disclosure, and ethical hackers’ behavior on bug bounty platforms. He has published in leading scientific journals such as Decision Support Systems, Frontiers in Public Health, and the proceedings of the various premier information systems conferences, including International Conference of Information Systems, Conference of Information Systems and Technology, Americas Conference of Information Systems, Hawaii International Conference, and Decision Science Institute Conference. He received a bachelor’s degree in Actuarial Sciences & Risk Management from the University of Karachi, an MS degree in Training & Human Resource Development from the University of Wisconsin – Stout, and an MS degree in Information Systems specializing in Data Management from Dakota State University.

Teaching Interests
  • System Analysis and Design
  • Data Analytics
  • Machine Learning
  • IT Security Economics
  • Health Informatics
  • IT Threat, Vulnerability Discovery, Disclosure, and Patching
Education
  • Ph.D. Management Information Systems, University of Massachusetts Lowell 
  • MS. Information Systems, Dakota State University
  • MS. Training and Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Stout
  • BS. Actuarial Sciences and Risk Management, University of Karachi, Pakistan
Published Research

Publications

  • Ahmed, Ali, Deokar, A., and Lee, B., “Vulnerability disclosure mechanisms: A synthesis and framework for market-based and non-market-based disclosures.” Decision Support Systems. DOI:10.1016/j.dss.2021.113586

  • Ahmed, Ali, Ali, A. and Hasan, S. (2020), “Comparison of Epidemiological Variations in COVID-19 Patients Inside and Outside of China—A Meta-Analysis” Frontiers in Public Health 8:193. DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2020.00193

Working Papers

  • The Role of Commitment in Online Reputation Systems: An Empirical Study of Delivery Speed Commitment in an Online Marketplace” Under review in Decision Support Systems. (With Brian Lee, Nichalin Summerfield and Amit Deokar)

  • "On Investigating Public Disclosure and Hacker Participation on Crowdsourced Vulnerability Discovery Platforms" Target journal ISR. (With Brian Lee and Amit Deokar)

  • "Organizational Learning Process on Bug-Bounty Platforms: The Role of Firm Experience and the Diversity of Hackers" Target journal JMIS (With Brian Lee and Amit Deokar)

Conference Proceedings

  • Ahmed, Ali, and Akar, E, "An Empirical Examination of Technology and Security Services in Sharing Economy," Americas Conference on Information Systems 2022 Proceedings.

  • AM Shah, Ahmed, A, "Designing an IT-Based System for Optimizing Lung Cancer Management," Americas Conference on Information Systems 2022 Proceedings.

  • Ahmed, Ali, Lee, B, Deokar, A, "The Role of Vulnerability Disclosure on Hacker Participation in Bug Bounty Programs," International Conference on Information Systems 2021 Proceedings. (Nominated for the Best Paper Award) 
  • Ahmed, Ali and Lee, B, “Organizational Learning on Bug Bounty Platforms,” Americas Conference on Information Systems 2020 Proceedings.
    • Awarded Best Research Presentation, 23rd Annual Student Research and Community Engagement Symposium, University of Massachusetts Lowell, 2020

  • Ahmed, A. (2020), “Developing IS Courses Around COVID-19 Pandemic,” (non-peer reviewed) Technology Research, Education, and Opinion (TREO) 2020 International Conferences on Information Systems (ICIS).

  • Ahmed, Ali, Nasralah, T, Wahbeh, A, Noteboom, C, “Patients’ Characteristics Affecting the Use of a MyChart Patient Portal” Proceedings of the 52nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2019, 3974-3979.

  • Al-Ramahi, M, Ahmed, Ali, “Identifying Users’ Concerns in Lodging Sharing Economy Using Unsupervised Machine Learning Approach” Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Data Intelligence and Security (ICDIS), South Padre Island, TX, USA, 2019, pp. 160-166.

  • Nasralah, T, Ahmed, Ali, Ali, A, “Negative Effects of Online Health Communities on User’s Health: The Case of Online Health Forums” Proceedings of the Thirteenth Midwest Association for Information Systems Conference, Saint Louis, Missouri May 17-18, 2018
  • Ahmed, Ali, Nasralah, T, Wang, Y, “Impact of E-Visits on Emergency Departments and Urgent Care Centers” Proceedings of the 23rd Americas Conference on Information Systems, Boston, MA, 2017.

  • Ahmed, Ali and Podhradsky, A, “Review of Mobile Applications Used for Covert Communication” MWAIS 2017 Proceedings. 50.
  • Nasralah, T, Ahmed, Ali, Noteboom, C, “Patients’ Characteristics and Utilization of MyChart” Proceedings of the 23rd Americas Conference on Information Systems, Boston, MA, 2017.
  • Ahmed, Ali and Podhradsky, A, “Security Vulnerabilities in High-Tech Children Toys” Proceedings of 22nd Americas Conference on Information Systems, San Diego, 2016. News coverage of the project: https://goo.gl/T1uoPm
Honors and Recognitions
Professional Memberships
  • Association for Information Systems (AIS) 
  • AIS Special Interest Group on Security and Privacy
  • INFORMS
  • International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group (WG) 8.11/11.13: Information Systems Security Research Group