The Mack Innovation Doctoral Association (MIDAS) is a student-run cross-departmental organization of Wharton PhD students interested in research topics related to innovation, including technology strategy, financing and organizing of innovation, entrepreneurship, and digitization. Its main activities include a seminar series for in-progress student research and the Wharton Innovation Doctoral Symposium (WINDS), a multi-disciplinary doctoral conference that takes place annually.
The MIDAS seminar series offers an informal and stimulating environment for students to propose new research ideas, discuss preliminary work, highlight new data sources, receive suggestions from peers, and circulate helpful information. Industry-academic seminars and workshops connect theory to practice and allow members to watch current innovation challenges play out.
Participation in MIDAS is primarily for Wharton doctoral and postdoctoral students. If you do not meet these criteria but would like to join, please contact the organizers below.
MIDAS is a collaboration between Wharton PhD students, the Mack Institute, and Wharton Doctoral Programs. The seminar was started by two PhD students, Andrea Contigiani (Management) and Kyle Myers (Healthcare), in the spring of 2015.
Seminar Topics
- Innovation and technology strategy
- Financing of innovation
- Organization of innovation
- Innovation and science policy
- Entrepreneurship
- Economics of digitization
Schedule
TBA
Board 2022–2023
- Jaeho Kim (President, MGMT) – kjaeho@wharton.upenn.edu
- Brittany Mallory (MGMT) – bmallory@wharton.upenn.edu
- Sathyanarayan Vijayakumar (MGMT) – sathyav@wharton.upenn.edu
- Vinay Subramanian (MGMT) – vinaysub@wharton.upenn.edu
- Berry Wang (OIDD) – zwangcj@upenn.edu
- Henrique Laurino Dos Santos (MKTG) – hlauri@wharton.upenn.edu
How to Join
To sign up, please email the organizers at board-innovation-group@wharton.upenn.edu.
Current Members
Jaeho Kim
Jaeho Kim is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Management Department at the Wharton School. He conducts research on strategies for fostering technological innovation by entrepreneurial individuals, firms, and ecosystems. His present work addresses startups’ innovation teams and investigates how the team composition of talents and tech-based knowledge affects the subsequent innovation performance of individual members of the team.
Henrique Laurino Dos Santos
Henrique is a fifth-year Ph.D. student in the Marketing department at the Wharton school. His research focuses on momentum-driven marketing problems, such as reducing consumer fatigue in digital advertising and forecasting virality in online networks. He has previously researched – and consulted for – the cinema and video game industries, as well as mobile fintech and superapps.
Brittany Mallory
Brittany Mallory is a Ph.D. student in management, specializing in strategic human capital. She studies how firms navigate the external labor market to hire workers and the consequences of mobility to workers’ careers. She is especially interested in how these questions intersect with startups as they scale and change organizational size and form. Prior to beginning doctoral work, Brittany worked in marketing research and as a research assistant studying coworking spaces and human capital mobility. She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Vinay Subramanian
Vinay is a 3rd year doctoral student in Management. His research interests are in entrepreneurial strategy, venture capital and innovation. Prior to academia, Vinay was a Managing Director at multiple PE and VC funds, investment banker at Goldman Sachs NY, led M&A at Flipkart and held board roles at unicorn startups. Vinay has degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan).
Sathya Vijayakumar
Sathya is a 4th year doctoral student in the Management Department with a focus on corporate and non-market strategy. In particular, his research interests range from mergers and acquisitions in innovative contexts to how social movements impact corporate policy. Prior to beginning doctoral work, Sathya worked for 7 years on management consulting and corporate social responsibility engagements. He previously earned an MBA from the University of Michigan and a BS from the University of North Carolina.
Berry Wang
Berry is a 3rd year doctoral student in the Operation, Information and Decisions Department at the Wharton School. His research interest lies in technology innovation and strategy. His present work studies how open source might fit into the overall IT strategy of firms. Prior to doctoral work, He received bachelor’s degree in computer science and business from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.Alumni
- Aparajita Agarwal
- Sarath Balachandran
- Jiayi Bao
- Aymeric Bellon
- Andrew Boysen
- Logan Bryan
- Qingqing Chen
- Jaeho Choi
- Andrea Contigiani
- John Eklund
- Charu Gupta
- Jessica Jeffers
- Fujie Jin
- Karren Knowlton
- Hideto Koizumi
- Jessica Kim-Gina
- Jason Lee
- Tong Liu
- Bowen Lou
- Xinyu Ma
- Mauricio Medeiros Junior
- Alex Miller
- Kyle R. Myers
- Tanya Paul
- Michael Pergler
- Lindsay Relihan
- Ryan Peters
- Lisa Tang
- Sirui Wang
- Daniel Wilde
- Andy Wu
- Hongyu Xiao