Centre for Decision Research

Areas of decision research study

Developing researchers in a number of areas of decision making

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Aritad Choicharoon (2015)

"The degree has opened doors into the analytics and data science job field for me, several companies admitted during recent interviews that there is a real gap in people having these skills"

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Dr Vedran Lesic (2017)

Vedran Lesic talks about his recent experience of undertaking his PhD at Leeds University Business School.

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Louisa O'Brien (2016)

"The number of universities offering this programme in Europe is quite limited, and I found the combination with analytics to be particularly thought provoking."

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Doctoral study

The Centre for Decision Research in Leeds University Business School is keen to encourage applications from students wishing to undertake a PhD in the area of decision making, and would be interested in discussing potential projects with students who would like to study here. Proposals are welcomed in any area of decision research, but at this time the following areas are of particular interest:

  • financial decision making
  • multi criteria decision making
  • consumer behavior
  • emotions in decision making
  • organisational group decision making
  • environmental decision making
  • individual differences in decision making competence across the life span
  • risk perception and communication
  • health decision making
  • decision making in elite team sports
  • analytics and big data

Potential supervisors

You can view each supervisors’ research interests by following the links below.

Find out more about postgraduate research at Leeds University Business School.

Taught programmes

The MSc Business Analytics and Decision Sciences programme delivers the knowledge and understanding of how business analytics can provide evidence to support management decision-making.

Dr Richard Hodgett Programme Director of MSc Business Analytics and Decision Sciences

Full details of the programme and how to apply can be found here.

The MSc Business Analytics and Decision Sciences has been ranked in the inaugural QS Master in Business Analytics rankings:

  • 8th in the UK
  • 48th globally
  • Joint 11th overall for Diversity
  • 23rd for Thought Leadership
  • 6th in the UK for Employability, joint 36th overall

Highlights from the 2014/15 cohort

The Premier Farnell Leadership Challenge

Students on CDR’s MSc Business Analytics & Decision Sciences took part in a “Leadership Challenge” with Premier Farnell organised by Jo Lumb, Engagement Manager in the Business School’s Management Division.

Saptarshi Ray of the MSc explained “We are taking part in the leaders’ challenge with one of the finest e-commerce companies in the world; Premier Farnell. We have got the challenge of demonstrating how big data analytics can help the company to improve their revenue and organisational efficiencies. We will be working as consultants for one month and will provide our suggestions to them.

“With the guidance of our Programme Director, Professor Alan Pearman, we undertook research on the company background and their business policy before going to the company and meeting their top personnel. Premier Farnell gave us a short presentation about their company and also briefed us on their current challenges and what they expect from us. We were given the opportunity to ask key questions to help with the challenge.

“It is a great experience for us to work as real life analytics consultants, which most of the students on our course aspire to be in their future career. We are grateful to Premier Farnell and the University of Leeds for providing us with this opportunity.”

The student group’s analysis of the company’s position was very well received and they subsequently were invited to make a full presentation to senior UK and US managers.

The team at Premier Farnell with Professor Barbara Summers

Presenting at EURO2015

Euro2015 is a major academic conference in the Operations Research area. Two MSc students, Saptarshi Ray and Ryzky Yudha presented papers:

Saptarshi Ray presented a talk titled “Association rules mining and cross correlation using Apriori algorithm to the financial market: The case with respect to UK Stock market and Global cues” and Ryzky Yudha presented a talk titled “Matching Critical Success Factors of Employee Performance to Help the Recruitment Process in Analysing Candidate Profiles by Incorporating Social Media Analytics”

Staff from the Centre for Decision Research also presented papers:

  • Simon McNair, Alan Pearman, Ken-Ichi Shimomura and Barbara Summers, An experimental exploration of behaviour patterns in a mixed strategy two-person game
  • Michele Lundy, Sajid Siraj and Salvatore Greco, Addressing weaknesses in pairwise comparison based prioritization methods – can the spanning tree approach help?
  • Richard Hodgett, ChemDecide – a MCDA software for the chemical-using industries