Professor Vinicius Andrade Brei
Vinicius Brei is a Research Affiliate and Connection Science Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, and an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil, where he founded and coordinates the Marketing and Consumption Research Lab. His research sits at the intersection of consumer analytics, judgment and decision-making, and market dynamics, with an emphasis on predicting individual and organizational behavior, estimating market potential, and forecasting demand for new business development. He employs behavioral experiments, GeoAI, Bayesian inference, and causal analysis, and currently leads the Atlas of Opportunities project, a Bayesian recommendation system for business location decisions built on geospatial artificial intelligence. Brei is a former Visiting Scholar at Harvard University and holds dual Ph.D. degrees, one in Sciences de Gestion from HEC Paris and the other in Marketing from UFRGS. He has raised multiple national and international research grants and scholarships, and his Fellowship at Clare Hall is supported by a CNPq Postdoctoral Scholarship Abroad. He serves on the editorial boards of the Encyclopedia of Artificial Intelligence in Marketing and the Journal of Marketing Management, and other leading journals.
At Clare Hall, Brei is accompanied by his wife, Bianca Tessele Brei, who holds a PhD in veterinary pathology. She is a Federal Agricultural Inspector Auditor at Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock.
Select publications
- Brei, V. A., Flores, A., & Rocha Trindade, J. (2026). Geospatial AI for Market Potential Estimation. In Encyclopedia of Artificial Intelligence in Marketing. Springer, Cham.
- Pasdiora, M. A., Brei, V. A., & Nicolao, L. (2025). Why do upgrades worsen consumers’ experience with their possessions? European Journal of Marketing, 59(2), 311-338.
- Limongi, R., Brei, V. A., Almeida, V. de S. e, & Francisco, E. de R. (2025). 1+1 > 2: Integrating Analytical Techniques in the Age of AI. Brazilian Administration Review, 22(4), e250230.
- Silveira Netto, C. F., Brei, V. A., & Hyndman, R. J. (2024). Forecasting system’s accuracy: A framework for the comparison of different structures. Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry, 40(2), 462-482.
- Brei, V. A., Rech, N., Bozkaya, B., Balcisoy, S., Pentland, A. P., & Silveira Netto, C. F. (2023). Satellite imagery and machine learning for channel member selection. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 51(11), 1552-1568.
- Silveira Netto, C. F., Bahrami, M., Brei, V. A., Bozkaya, B., Balcisoy, S., & Pentland, A. P. (2023). Disaggregating sales prediction: A gravitational approach. Expert Systems with Applications, 217, 119565.
- Brei, V. A. (2020). Machine Learning in Marketing: Overview, Learning Strategies, Applications, and Future Developments. Foundations and Trends in Marketing, 14(3), 173-235.
- Brei, V. A., & Tadajewski, M. (2015). Crafting the market for bottled water: a social praxeology approach. European Journal of Marketing, 49(3/4), 327-349.
Select awards
- 2026 – 2nd Place, I-GUIDE Spatial AI Challenge 2025-26. Project “GeoLocate: Spatial Modeling of Market Entry Viability.” Team: Jaiany Rocha Trindade (UFRGS/Harvard), Vinicius Brei (UFRGS/MIT), and Devika Jain (Harvard). I-GUIDE (NSF National Data Platform/University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign). https://i-guide.io/spatial-ai-challenge-2025-26/challenge-winners/
- 2026 – 3rd Place, I-GUIDE Spatial AI Challenge 2025-26. Project “From Mobility Intensity to Market Infrastructure: A Spatial AI Framework for Recovering Hidden Spatial Regimes and Multiscale Variation.” Team: Rafael Albuquerque (UFRGS), Jéssica Miranda (UFRGS), Vinicius Andrade Brei (UFRGS/MIT), and Siqin (Sisi) Wang (University of Southern California). I-GUIDE (NSF National Data Platform/University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign). https://i-guide.io/spatial-ai-challenge-2025-26/challenge-winners/
- 2025 – Winner of the Doctoral Competition for Conceptual Articles (DoCCA), Academy of Marketing Science Review/Sheth Foundation (Award). “Understanding Uncertainty in Market Entry: A Theoretical Integration”. Author: Jaiany Rocha Trindade. I was the advisor for this paper.
Further links
University’s web page: https://www.ufrgs.br/escoladeadministracao/professor/vinicius-andrade-brei/
Marketing and Consumption lab: https://www.ufrgs.br/gpmc/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brei/