Babak is interim Head of the Department of Actuarial Studies and Business Analytics at Macquarie Business School. He is also an adjunct fellow at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). He holds a PhD in Information Systems from UNSW Business School, with a multi-disciplinary background in business, statistical modelling, and computer science. Prior to academia, he used to work in IT and management consulting. His research is inspired by problems in practice and is rooted in behavioural and managerial theories. Babak's research examines the positive and negative aspects of business analytics and information systems at organisational and individual levels. In particular, he is interested in the transformational effects of health analytics, social analytics, and artificial intelligence.

Babak has so far received about half a million dollars in external funding through engagement with Cancer Council NSW, Asia Productivity Organization, Reserve Bank of Australia, The Whiddon Group, Suicide Prevention Australia, and other partners. On the teaching front, his approach is driven by problems in the industry and society. In 2019, he won UTS Learning & Teaching Citation and in 2010 he received Macquarie University's Faculty of Business teaching award.

Babak is an editorial member of Electronic Markets, Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research, and a section editor in Australasian Journal of IS. He is also guest co-editor of a 2021 special issue on Designing and Managing Human-AI Interactions in Information Systems Frontiers, a guest editor of a 2022 special issue on Explainable and Responsible Artificial Intelligence in Electronic Markets, and a co-chair of the Australasian Conference in Information Systems in 2021. He is a member of The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), Association for Information Systems (AIS) and Australian Computer Society (ACS). Babak has published over 80 publications, with 25 of which in A/A* journals such as Information & Management, Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, Internet Research, Journal of the American Medical Informatics, Information Systems Frontiers, and Information Technology & People. In 2020, he co-authored a paper on gender bias in AI, which was awarded Natalie F Hardwicke prize from Australasian Conference in Information Systems.

He is available for media commentary, actively engages with media outlets about his research in social media and health informatics, and has written for The Conversation, and been interviewed by ABC News 24, 2Ser FM, and Macquarie's The Lighthouse

Supervision: Babak has so far supervised several HDR students to completion. He is available to supervise research students in the following areas:

• Online communities and social media
• Responsible Analytics and AI
• Managing Business Analytics, People & Organization
• Social Media Analytics
• Health Analytics
• Ethics of Analytics & AI

Teaching

• Business Analytics Project
• Management of Analytics, Data and Change