PhD Student Hemanshu Das Wins Best Doctoral Paper Presentation at AI in Business Conference
Das’s doctoral research on AI-based advising for students was recognized at the inaugural conference, hosted by the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University.
Hemanshu Das, a doctoral student in operations, has received the Best Doctoral Paper Presentation award at the inaugural AI in Business Conference, hosted by the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University. Das was honored for a working paper he co-authored with Faidra Monachou, assistant professor of operations at Yale SOM; and Sofoklis Goulas, an associate research scholar at Yale’s MacMillan Center. The paper, “Why Students Reject AI for Human Counselors in College Applications: A Field Experiment,” examines how students perceive and respond to algorithmic versus human advice in high-stakes educational settings such as college applications.
In their study, Das and his co-authors ran a large-scale field experiment examining how adolescents respond to AI advice in high-stakes education decisions. They found that students were more likely to dismiss AI recommendations grounded in empirical criteria such as grades or admissions chances, and that their doubts were grounded in distrust of the AI recommender’s good intentions.
Das, a fifth-year PhD student, uses data-driven models and field experiments to improve education policy by identifying interventions that are scalable, measurable, and incentive-aligned for students, teachers, and platforms. His current projects explore personalized learning and teacher workforce design. He recently received the 2025 Duolingo Dissertation Award, and is advised by Professors Edieal Pinker and Faidra Monachou.
