Yael Grushka-Cockayne
Senior Associate Dean for the Full-Time (Residential) MBA
Landmark Communication Professor of Business Administration
Academic Co-director LaCross Institute for AI & Special Advisor to the Provost on AI
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Areas of Expertise
Education: B.Sc., Ben-Gurion University; M.Sc., London School of Economics; Ph.D., M.Res., London Business School
Professor Yael Grushka-Cockayne is the Senior Associate Dean for the Full-Time (Residential) MBA, Landmark Communication Professor of Business Administration, and Academic Co-director LaCross Institute for AI & Special Advisor to the Provost on AI at the Darden School of Business. Her research and teaching activities focus on data science, forecasting, project management and behavioral decision-making. Her research is published in numerous academic and professional journals, and she is a regular speaker at international conferences in the areas of decision analysis, project management and management science.
Prof. Grushka-Cockayne is an award-winning teacher, winning the Darden Morton Leadership Faculty Award in 2011, the University of Virginia's Mead-Colley Award in 2012 and the Darden Outstanding Faculty Award in 2013 and 2022, the Faculty Diversity Award in 2013 and 2018, the University of Virginia All University Teaching Award in 2015, the Executive MBA Transformational Faculty in 2024, and the Part Time MBA Transformational Faculty in 2025.
Prof. Grushka-Cockayne teaches the core "Decision Analysis" course, an elective she designed on project management and an elective on data science. She has served as the leader of the open enrollment courses "Project Management for Executives" and for multiple custom programs such as AARP’s Executive Leadership Program.
Before starting her academic career, she worked in San Francisco as a marketing director of an Israeli ERP company. As an expert in the areas of project management, Prof. Grushka-Cockayne has served as a consultant to international firms in the aerospace and pharma industries. She is a member of INFORMS, the Decision Analysis Society, the Operational Research Society and the Project Management Institute (PMI).
She is an associate editor at Management Science and Operation Research and the Past President of the INFORMS Decision Analysis Society.
Grushka-Cockayne was named one of "21 Thought-Leader Professors" in Data Science. Her recent "Fundamentals of Project Planning and Management" Coursera MOOC had over 350,000 enrolled, across 200 countries worldwide. Her "Data Science for Business" Harvard Online course, launched in 2021, has taught hundreds of learners around the world.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne's Ideas to Action Posts
Selected Publications
Freeman, R.E., P.S. Menghwar, and Grushka-Cockayne, Y. A Stakeholder Theory Perspective for Project Management. Invited essay International Journal of Project Management, Volume 43, Issue 7, 2025.
Petropoulos, F., Grushka-Cockayne Y., Enno Siemsen, Evangelos Spiliotis, Wielding Occam’s razor: Fast and frugal retail forecasting. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 2025 Forthcoming.
Guo X., K. C. Lichtendahl Jr. and Y. Grushka-Cockayne. 2025. Bayesian Ensembles of Exponentially Smoothed Life-Cycle Forecasts, Forthcoming Manufacturing & Service Operations Management.
- *****Winner of Decision Analysis Society Student Paper Award 2018
- *****Finalist in POM Data Driven Paper Competition 2019
Baucells M., Grushka-Cockayne Y. and Hwang W. 2023. Managerial Mental Accounting and Downstream Project Decisions, Management Science, 70(12).
Soule D., Y. Grushka-Cockayne, J. Merrick. 2023. A Heuristic for Combining Correlated Experts When There are Few Data, Management Science, 70(10).
Hovhannisyan, V., Zachares, P., Mosca, A., and Y. Grushka-Cockayne. 2023. Data-Driven Schedule Risk Forecasting for Construction Mega-Projects, AACE International Transactions.
Randazoo, S., Paik, J.H., Grushka-Cockayne, Y., 2023. Commonwealth Bank: Amplifying Customer Centricity With AI, Management and Business Review, 3(1).
Lichtendahl Jr, K. C., Grushka-Cockayne, Y., Jose, V. R., & Winkler, R. L. 2022. Extremizing and Anti-extremizing in Bayesian Ensembles of Binary-Event Forecasts. Operations Research, 70(5), 2998-3014.
Guo, X., Grushka-Cockayne, Y., & De Reyck, B. 2022. Forecasting airport transfer passenger flow using real-time data and machine learning. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 24(6), 3193-3214. *****Finalist in MSOM Practice Paper Competition 2019.
Guo X., Y. Grushka-Cockayne, and De Reyck, B. 2020. London Heathrow Airport Uses Real-Time Analytics for Improving Operations, Journal of Applied Analytics, 50(5), 325-339, *****Finalist in Wagner Competition.
Grushka-Cockayne Y. and V. R. R. Jose. 2020. Combining prediction intervals in the M4 competition, International Journal of Forecasting, 36(1), 178-185.
Winkler, R. L, Y. Grushka-Cockayne, K. C. Lichtendahl Jr. and V. R. R. Jose. 2019. Probability Forecasts and Their Combination: A Research Perspective. Decision Analysis, 16(4), 239-260.
Working Papers
Merrick, J., Massey, C., Grushka-Cockayne Y, and Drapkin Z. Decision Making with Ordinal Ratings, Revise and Resubmit requested from Management Science.
Satopää, V.A., Palley, A.B., Grushka-Cockayne Y., Persinger C., Machine-Moderated Judgmental Forecasting to Improve Prediction Accuracy and Decision Making. Reject and Resubmit requested from Operation Research.
Lapierre-Berger,G., Serpa, J.C., Grushka-Cockayne Y, Party Allegiance and the Operations of Public Projects.
Lapierre-Berger,G., Serpa, J.C., Hovhannisyan, V., Grushka-Cockayne Y, Productive Delays.
Work in progress
Palley, A.B., Lichtendahl Jr., K. C., Grushka-Cockayne Y., Sport Obermeyer Revisited: Using Point Estimates to Construct a Probability Distribution
Markou, P., Grushka-Cockayne, Y. and Chao, R., R&D Portfolio Impact and Novelty
Peker, C., Grushka-Cockayne Y, V. R. R. Jose, J. Rittich, and J. Soll, Using Prediction Interval Skewness to Improve Forecast Accuracy.
Soll, J., Y. Grushka-Cockayne, V. R. R. Jose, D. Budescu, Perspectives on Diversity: Lessons for
Decision Analysis
Case Studies
Advancing knowledge through research that shapes business, Darden professors are recognized thought leaders in their fields. They are not only master case method teachers, they also author many of the cases used in Darden classrooms and around the world.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne's cases are available in the Darden Business Publishing website.
R Package
projmanr, Greenawald B., Y. Grushka-Cockayne. 2017.
trimTrees, Y. Grushka-Cockayne, V. R. R. Jose, K. C. Lichtendahl Jr. and H. Zeng. 2014.
Book Chapters And Other Publications
Grushka-Cockayne, Y. 2020. Using Data to Revolutionize Project Planning. HBR.org.
R. L. Winkler, V. R. R. Jose, K. C. Lichtendahl Jr. and Y. Grushka-Cockayne, 2018. Aggregating Information with a Quantile Stacker, Bayesian Analysis.
Grushka-Cockayne Y., K. Alford, W. Wardle. 2018. Business Leaders Look to the past to inform the future. Darden Ideas to Action.
Freakonomics, Episode 323: Here’s Why All Your Projects Are Always Late — and What to Do About, 2018.
Grushka-Cockayne Y., 2018. Project Management Lessons from Healthcare.gov Launch. Darden Ideas to Action.
Grushka-Cockayne Y. and J. Sims. 2017. Three Keys to Project Management: Lessons from the 21st Century Battlefield. Darden Ideas to Action.
Grushka-Cockayne Y., S. Erat and J. Wooten. 2017. New Product Development and Project Management Decisions, in Donohue K., E. Katok and S. Leider. Eds. Handbook of Behavioral Operations. Wiley and Son.
Grushka-Cockayne Y., V. Holzmann, H. Weisz and D. Zitter. 2015. A New Hybrid Approach for Selecting a Project Management Methodology. Proceedings of the PMI North American Congress.
Grushka-Cockayne, Y. and K. C. Lichtendahl Jr., How Vungle Lets Its Customers Innovate? Case in Point, The Washington Post, September 20, 2015.
De Reyck, B., Y. Grushka-Cockayne, I. Fragkos, J. Harrison and D. Read. 2015. Optimism Bias Study Recommended Adjustments to Optimism Bias Uplifts, UK Department for Transport.
Grushka-Cockayne, Y., The planning fallacy' can derail a project's best intentions. Case in Point, The Washington Post, March 8, 2015. 3
Eubanks, D. L., D. Read and Y. Grushka-Cockayne. 2015. Biases as a Constraint on Planning Performance, in M. Mumford and M. Frese, Eds. The Psychology of Planning in Organizations. Routledge, New York .
Grushka-Cockayne, Y. and K. C. Lichtendahl Jr., Is it better to trust the best expert, or the average of a group of experts? Case in Point, The Washington Post, November 16, 2013.
Grushka-Cockayne, Y., D. Read and B. De Reyck. Planning for the Planning Fallacy: Causes and Solutions for Unrealistic Project Expectations. Proceedings of the PMI Research and Education Conference 2012, Limerick, Ireland.
Kettunen, J., Y. Grushka-Cockayne, B. De Reyck, Z. Degraeve, A. Salo. 2008. Management of new product development: the impact of competition and market characteristics. Proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Project Management and Scheduling, Istanbul, Turkey.
Laseter, T., K. C. Lichtendahl Jr. and Y. Grushka-Cockayne. Cleaning the Crystal Ball,strategy+business, 2010.
Grushka-Cockayne, Y. 2007. Book review: Kaliszewski, Ignacy. 2006. Soft Computing for Complex Multiple Criteria Decision Making. Interfaces, 37(6), 588-59.