Narayan S. Umanath is Professor [Emeritus] of Information Systems at the University of Cincinnati (UC) in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. He has been at UC since 1996 and served as the department head of Information Systems (IS) for 7 years. Before that, he has been a faculty member at the Pennsylvania State University at the main (University Park) campus and the University of Tulsa. Umanath also serves as a member of the faculty in the Department of Mathematics & Computer Science (DMACS) at the Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning (SSSIHL) in Prashanti Nilayam, India in the capacity of Visiting Professor since 2003. Entering academia after 17 years of technical and managerial experience in software development, he received his Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of Houston in 1987. His undergraduate and graduate educations are in mechanical engineering and industrial engineering, respectively. Umanath has research publications in the domains of data visualization for decision support, agency theory applications in the design of compensation contracts, organizational computing, and electronic integration in supply channels; his current research interests are in the domains of knowledge exchange in supply-chain relationships, and data modeling & data warehousing. His research publications have appeared in Management Science, Decision Sciences, Journal of MIS, Communications of the ACM, International Journal of Information Management, Information & Management, Information Resources Management Journal, Journal of Managerial Issues and National Academy Science Letters. Umanath has also co-authored a text book titled "Data Modeling & Database Design."