HEC Paris welcomes three new faculty members in 2026
The appointments strengthen expertise in artificial intelligence, operations, organizational research and management education across HEC Paris in France and Qatar.
HEC Paris welcomes three new faculty members in 2026, bringing together expertise in artificial intelligence, operations research, machine learning, organizational ethnography and management education. Maximilian Schiffer joins the Information Systems and Operations Management Department in France as a tenured associate professor. Amin Yousefi becomes an assistant professor in the Management and Human Resources Department at HEC Paris in Qatar, while Moritz von Zahn joins Information Systems and Operations Management as an education-track assistant professor.
Artificial intelligence for business decisions
Maximilian Schiffer arrives from the Technical University of Munich, where he has been a tenured professor of Business Analytics and Intelligent Systems and a core member of the Munich Data Science Institute. He previously held visiting appointments at Stanford University and completed his PhD in Operations Research at RWTH Aachen University in 2017.
His research sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence, machine learning and operations research. It develops methods for high-impact business decisions, combining reinforcement learning and combinatorial optimization with applications in operations, supply chains and transportation. His work has addressed sustainable mobility, e-commerce logistics, large-scale transportation planning and algorithmic collusion, including the risk that AI-based pricing algorithms may tacitly converge on prices above competitive levels.
Schiffer's research and teaching have received several distinctions. These include the INFORMS Transportation Science and Logistics Dissertation Prize, the German Operations Research Society's doctoral dissertation prize, the 2024 Paper of the Year Award from Transportation Science, a TUM teaching award and a supervisory prize linked to his mentoring of doctoral students. Schiffer’s talents aren’t confined to research, however: he is behind a successful startup linked to decision-focused learning which we are likely to hear more about soon.s
Organizations in Extreme Contexts
Amin Yousefi joins HEC Paris in Qatar while completing his PhD in Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. He was also a visiting PhD student at the University of Cambridge in 2025 and holds an MSc in Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Yousefi studies how organizations strategize in extreme contexts, using itinerant and visual ethnography. His fieldwork includes an 18-month study of faith-based microfinance, a six-week journey with Bakhtiari nomads in the Zagros mountains, and research into women-led solidarity circles. [DB1] Across these projects, he has conducted more than 300 interviews and assembled a visual record of more than 6,000 photographs.
His research examines organizational purpose, institutional complexity and social evaluation at the intersection of strategy, entrepreneurship and organization theory. It has contributed to an article on standardization published in Academy of Management Annals, while his job-market paper on the tension between religious purity and social purpose in microfinance is at the revise-and-resubmit stage at Administrative Science Quarterly. His academic experience is complemented by more than a decade in leadership development, instructional design and teaching.
Teaching artificial intelligence and information systems
Moritz von Zahn joins HEC Paris as an education-track assistant professor in Information Systems and Operations Management. He completed a PhD in Information Systems and Applied Machine Learning at Goethe University Frankfurt in 2024, receiving the highest distinction, and has since worked there as a postdoctoral researcher. His international experience includes research at Boston University and ETH Zurich, as well as study periods at the University of Cambridge, Instituto Superior Tecnico in Lisbon and the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Von Zahn combines academic work in information systems and applied machine learning with substantial classroom experience. Since 2022, he has taught artificial intelligence in executive education, building on earlier teaching in service design thinking, programming and the foundations of informatics. His work has received the 2024 WISE Best Paper Award, Goethe University Frankfurt's award for the best dissertation in its faculty, the 2023 AIS Best Information Systems Publication Award and the 2023 Information Systems Research Best Paper Award.
Together, the three appointments extend HEC Paris's capacity to research and teach how technology reshapes decisions and organizations, while strengthening the School's faculty presence in both France and Qatar.