Marc Ruggiano

Marc Ruggiano is a Lecturer with a joint appointment at the University of Virginia's School of Data Science and Darden School of Business. He serves as the Inaugural Director of the Darden-SDS Collaboratory for Applied Data Science (DCADS), a UVA Provost-sponsored initiative advancing interdisciplinary research and teaching at the intersection of data science and business. He teaches in the M.S. in Data Science, MBA, and M.S. in Business Analytics programs.

Education:

• Ph.D. in Higher Education, University of Pennsylvania
• MBA, Darden School of Business, University of Virginia
• B.S. in Computer Science, United States Naval Academy

Ruggiano's research centers on healthcare-related decision-making and the evolution of organizational leadership in data-intensive environments. Using experimental methodologies, his work explores individual and group choice behaviors and designs interventions to improve outcomes. His interests span applied data science in marketing, health informatics, consumer behavior, and higher education pathways.

Ruggiano has held visiting research roles at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. His industry experience includes over two decades in technology and healthcare, notably as head of Customer Relationship Marketing at Humana, where his team managed over one billion annual health interventions. Earlier, he served as a U.S. Navy officer and F-14 flight instructor, and worked at McKinsey & Company.

Scientific Awards:

He has presented research at the American Education Research Association Annual Meeting and the International Pathways to Medicine Workshop at WZB Berlin. He advises no formal students listed in the current data and has not received any explicitly named scientific awards. He leads the DCADS, which functions as a collaborative lab for applied data science projects between Darden and the School of Data Science.