Professor Shan Pan

Scientia Professor Shan L Pan is an AGSM Scholar and Deputy Head of School (Research) at the School of Information Systems and Technology Management, UNSW Business School. He is the Director of the Digital Sustainability Knowledge Hub (DS Hub), which specialises in research and education on digital sustainability, aiming to contribute to achieving the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs). In addition, Shan is the inventor of a sustainability intelligence system that tracks leading business organisations’ Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) strategies and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) performance.  

Shan’s research interest is the enabling roles of digital technologies in innovation and sustainability. As a phenomenon-based researcher using qualitative and design research methods, Shan has documented some of the most valuable digital transformation best practices arising from businesses, cities, remote villages, and government agencies in their rapid development over the last two decades. As an action design science researcher, he is particularly interested in the designs of digital technologies that address sustainability challenges. He frequently travels to developing economies, where he studies the indigenous practices of information systems.

Shan has published widely in journals such as MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Journal of the AIS, Information Systems Journal, European Journal of Information Systems, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, Journal of Information Technology, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, European Journal of Operational Research, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Communications of ACM, among others. Shan serves on several editorial boards, including the Journal of the AIS (Senior Editor) and the Journal of Strategic Information Systems (Senior Editor). He has also served on the editorial boards of Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Journal, Information and Management, and the European Journal of Information Systems.  

Shan received Association for Information Systems (AIS) Fellow Award in 2022, recognizing his outstanding contributions to research, teaching and service in the information systems discipline. 

In 2020, Shan was awarded the inaugural AIS Impact Award for his impact-centric research achievements. The award recognises his fundamental research on digital enablement and the invention of a knowledge-sharing platform that more than 100 educators used to facilitate remote teaching to children disadvantaged by educational inequality in remote villages. Shan has endeavoured to create scientific inventions. He has a patent for a knowledge-based system he had invented. In addition, he’s recently built an intelligence system that tracks leading organisations’ Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) strategies. The system is now undergoing IP registration. For his leadership in technological innovation and contributions to the IS community, Shan has received the AIS Technology VISION Award twice (2020 and 2021).

Shan is a passionate educator who strives to develop pedagogical breakthroughs. He has won seven education-excellence awards for his pedagogical innovation and drive to teaching excellence. In 2022, he won AIS COVID-19 Learning Action Award (2020) for his creative invention of a mobile application to facilitate rapid learning when the pandemic first struck. In addition, his invention of the Sandbox Method for Translational Research has won the AACSB Innovations that Inspire Award (2019).