When Rajneesh Suri moved to the U.S. from India, he was fascinated by the difference between the bartering culture in open-air markets of his home country and the bargain-hunting he saw here. His early research on the motivations underlying consumer purchases led to a career change from engineering to business academia.
Today, Suri leads the Neuro-Business Solutions Center at the LeBow College of Business. He connects organizations outside of Drexel with multi-disciplinary teams of graduate business students and professors in fields as diverse as retail fashion and bioengineering.
“What we’re doing with student teams and projects is the next frontier in terms of understanding human behavior.”
While much of the world focuses on the digital data stream generated by people using technology, Suri’s lab uses high-tech tools — such as the portable fNIR designed at Drexel University — to access “another type of data humans are creating.” Those data come from blood flow in the frontal and prefrontal cortices, which reveal thought processes people may not even be aware of themselves.
In an economy flooded with data, Suri is building Drexel’s reputation as the place where you go beyond the what of data analytics, into the why of human analytics.
