Bio
Kurt Pflughoeft is the Sentry Insurance Endowed Chair of Computational Analytics in the Sentry School of Business and Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. He has more than 20 years of industry experience applying data science techniques in his past roles as the Chief Analytics Officer at MaritzCX and the head of Marketing Sciences at Market Probe. At both of these jobs, he won Corporate Innovation Awards by solving difficult client problems with advanced techniques.
Prior to his work as a data scientist, Prof. Pflughoeft served as the CIO for Market Probe, an international market research company. He led the transformation from snail mail/phone surveys to web surveys and finally mobile questionnaires. Additional efforts included the automation of the sampling and reporting processes. He also was instrumental in setting up the Bangalore IT center and led the efforts on security as a CISSP.
Prof. Pflughoeft has presented at numerous conferences and published in several journals. Conferences include both the AMA Advanced Research Techniques and Americas Conference on Information Systems where he won best paper awards. His articles have appeared in Decision Sciences, Omega, European Journal of Production Research, International Journal of Flexible Manufacturing Systems, Journal of Manufacturing Systems, Statistics and Probability Letters, Journal of Structural Equation Modeling, Information & Management and Behavior & Information Technology.
Prof. Pflughoeft has taught extensively at several universities as either a professor or an adjunct professor. He has taught at UW-Milwaukee, Wisconsin Lutheran College, Marquette University, Carroll University and UTEP where he won an undergraduate teaching award. He also helped develop several corporate IT training programs.
Experience and Interests
Teaching Experience
- Assistant Professor, Sentry School of Business and Economics (2018-present)
- ITM Lecturer, UW-Milwaukee (2017-2018)
- Adjunct Instructor, UW-Milwaukee (2000-2017)
- Assistant Professor, UW-Milwaukee (1997-2000)
- Assistant Professor, University of Texas, El Paso, El Paso, Texas (1993-1997)
Research Interests
- Machine Learning
- Marketing Analytics
- Manufacturing Analytics
Professional Experience
- Advanced Analytics Chief, Maritz Research, St. Louis, Mo. (2010-2017)
- SVP of Marketing Sciences, Market Probe, Milwaukee, Wis. (2006-2010)
- CIO, Market Probe, Milwaukee, Wis. (2000-2006)
Involvement
Campus
- Author/Presenter, Center for Business and Economic Insight, UW-Stevens Point
- Co-chair for the Great Lakes Analytics Conference, UWSP, 2019
Community
- Member, Sentry Advisory Board for Data Analytics
Professional Memberships
- American Statistical Association (2000-present)
- ISC2 – Computer Security Member (2003-present)
Presentations and Publications
- Data avatars: A theory-guided design and assessment for multidimensional data visualization,” (with F. Zahedi and Y. Chen), Information & Management, Volume 61, Issue 2, March 2024. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378720623001593
- “Prioritizing Cell Tower Site Recommendations outside U.S. Metropolitan Areas,” (with G. Nemecek and N. Butz), Analytics, 2022, 1, 56-71. https://doi.org/10.3390/analytics1010006
- “Information Architecture for Data Disclosure’” (with E. Soofi and R. Soyer), Entropy, 2022, 24, 670. https://doi.org/10.3390/e24050670
- “Two Measures of Sample Entropy,” (with N. Ebrahimi and E. Soofi), Statistics and Probability Letters, 1994, 20, pp. 225-234.
Fun Facts
Last book you read?
Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions
Best advice you ever received?
Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Lumberjack
Favorite Quote?
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”
One thing about your school that you are most proud of?
Many of the degrees have a strong applied component.
What do you enjoy most about teaching?
Watching the students evolve into data analysts.
A piece of advice for students in your school?
Study hard now to reap the future rewards.