The Academic Minute for 2018.08.27-08.31 – Babson College Week

Academic Minute from 8.27 – 8.31

Monday, August 27th
Vikki Rodgers – Babson College
New England Forests and Climate Change
Dr. Rodgers joined Babson College in September 2007 and has taught a variety of ecology, botany and environmental science courses. She currently teaches courses in: Case Studies in Ecological Management (NST2020), Economic Botany (SCN3630), and Art & Ecology (ENV4610). Dr. Rodgers received her B.S. in Biology at the University of New Hampshire in 1999 and her Ph.D. in Forest Ecology and Biogeochemistry at Boston University in 2007. Her doctoral research focused on the impacts of invasive plant species on soil nutrient cycling, microbial populations, and native plant communities in forests of New England. She regularly presents her research at national conferences and her work has been accepted for publication in peer-reviewed scientific journals such as: BioScience, Journal of Ecology and Oecologia. She was awarded the Deans Award for Teaching Excellence in 2012 and the Faculty Scholarship Award in 2014.

Tuesday, August 28th
Jennifer Bailey – Babson College
Managing Resources and Mitigating Risk in Entrepreneurial Firms
Jennifer Bailey is an Assistant of Technology and Operations Management. Her areas of expertise and interest include operations management, innovation management, organizational learning and entrepreneurship. In particular, her research focuses on how innovative and entrepreneurial firms manage risk and uncertainty. For innovative firms, her current research examines the innovation development process to identify effective strategies which firms can employ in order to maximize the likelihood of generating innovation breakthroughs, while mitigating innovation risks and leveraging opportunities for learning from failure. Jennifer was the recipient of the 2015 Best Paper Award at the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) conference for her research on innovation management. For entrepreneurial firms, her research explores effective strategies which can be employed to mitigate the operational risks and challenges faced by start-up ventures.

Wednesday, August 29th
Lauren Beitelspacher – Babson College
Changing the Value Proposition Through Stories
Lauren Skinner Beitelspacher (Ph.D., University of Alabama) is an Associate Professor in the Marketing Division at Babson College. Her research interests include: b​uyer-supplier relationships, retail management, and the retail supply chain. Her work has been published in numerous scholarly journals including: Journal of Marketing, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Retailing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Business Research, and Industrial Marketing Management. She has also presented her work at numerous conferences and won several best paper in track awards at the American Marketing Association, Society for Marketing Advances and Academy of Marketing Science conferences. Her research concentrates specifically on the relationships with retailers and manufacturers. Whenever possible, her research focuses in the athletic, outdoor, and sporting goods industry.

Thursday, August 30th
Davit Khachatryan – Babson College
Mining Patent Data For Public Good
Dr. Davit Khachatryan is an applied statistician with research interests in analyzing intellectual property data to study the formation and diffusion of knowledge in emerging industries. Davit’s current and former research has produced publications in academic, peer-reviewed journals such as Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (Series C), The American Statistician, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management (forthcoming), and Quality and Reliability Engineering International. Prior to joining Babson College, Davit was a Senior Associate at the National Economics and Statistics practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). In the latter role he consulted in the area of predictive modeling and advanced data analytics, helping clients from financial, healthcare, and government sectors with building automatic predictive models and enhancing business intelligence solutions. Davit has earned his B.S. in Applied Mathematics and Informatics from Yerevan State University, M.S. in Statistics and Ph.D. in Management Science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Friday, August 31st
Siddharth Vedula – Babson College
It’s Not Easy Building Green
Dr. Siddharth (Sid) Vedula is an Assistant Professor in the Entrepreneurship division at Babson College. He holds a PhD in Management and Entrepreneurship from the University of Colorado at Boulder, a Masters degree in Biomedical Engineering from McGill University, and a Bachelors Degree in Physiology from the University of Toronto. Prior to his academic career, he worked as a research scientist in the medical device industry. He also helped found and manage an unmanned aerial vehicles startup firm during his doctoral studies. Professor Vedula comes from a multicultural background, having spent his formative years in India and the United Arab Emirates, and his adult years in Canada and the U.S.