Mack Innovation Doctoral Association

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

How to Join

To sign up, please email the organizers at board-innovation-group@wharton.upenn.edu.

Members and Alumni

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 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 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.

Research Keywords:

mergers; acquisitions; activist investors; social movements


Berry Wang

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