Faculty

Robert Freund won the Samuel M. Seegal Faculty Prize, which was established by Paula Seegal-Thompson for her father, a member of the class of 1922. The Seegal Prize is shared with the MIT School of Engineering and is awarded every other year to a professor “who inspires students in pursuing and achieving excellence.”  The Seegal faculty prize is selected by a review committee at MIT.

S.P. Kothari is the recipient of a 2020 Padma Shri Award, one of the highest civilian honors offered by the Government of India for distinguished service in any field. Kothari’s Padma Shri Award (the fourth-highest civilian award in the country) is in the field of “Literature and Education,” and the citation notes “his valuable contribution in the fields of finance and academia.” Kothari is currently on leave from MIT Sloan, serving since March of last year as Chief Economist and Director of the Division of Economic and Risk Analysis at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

 

Christine Kelly, senior lecturer, is one of several faculty members at MIT Sloan who have won the 2019 Ideas Worth Teaching Award from The Aspen Institute’s Business & Society Program. The other MIT Sloan winners are Barbara Dyer, Leigh Hafrey, and Thomas Kochan. This award recognizes 10 exceptional courses, and honors faculty who are redefining business education, providing learning experiences that equip managers of tomorrow with the context, skills, and decision-making capabilities needed to lead in an increasingly complex business environment and world. The award celebrates innovative teaching that challenges conventional thinking and tests new approaches to divisive issues, rethinking the path forward for business and society and preparing students to make business decisions that create both financial and social value.

The winning course, 15.S02 “Bridging the American Divides: Work Community and Culture —USA Lab,” is MIT Sloan’s U.S.-focused Action Learning Lab, developed by the Good Companies, Good Jobs Initiative at MIT Sloan in partnership with the MIT Mens et Manus America Initiative and MIT Sloan Action Learning.

Leigh Hafrey, senior lecturer, is one of several faculty members at MIT Sloan who have won the 2019 Ideas Worth Teaching Award from The Aspen Institute’s Business & Society Program. The other MIT Sloan winners are Barbara Dyer, Christine Kelly, and Thomas Kochan. This award recognizes 10 exceptional courses, and honors faculty who are redefining business education, providing learning experiences that equip managers of tomorrow with the context, skills, and decision-making capabilities needed to lead in an increasingly complex business environment and world. The award celebrates innovative teaching that challenges conventional thinking and tests new approaches to divisive issues, rethinking the path forward for business and society and preparing students to make business decisions that create both financial and social value.

The winning course, 15.S02 “Bridging the American Divides: Work Community and Culture —USA Lab,” is MIT Sloan’s U.S.-focused Action Learning Lab, developed by the Good Companies, Good Jobs Initiative at MIT Sloan in partnership with the MIT Mens et Manus America Initiative and MIT Sloan Action Learning.

The University of Geneva is recognizing Henry “Jake” Jacoby with an honorary doctorate. He was proposed by the University’s School of Economics and Management, to honor his contributions in the area of climate change and in thanks for his strong ties with the School’s project in this area, related to the integration of natural and social sciences in policy analysis of the climate threat. The degree will be conferred in the fall of 2019.

Christopher Palmer was honored with the Best Paper in Corporate Finance Award in 2019. 
The award, given by the Society of Financial Studies, was for the paper, “The Capitalization of Consumer Financing into Durable Goods Prices.” Palmer's paper co-author's were
Bronson Argyle, Taylor Nadauld, and Ryan Pratt.

Jackson Lu has won the 2019 Alvah H. Chapman Jr. Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Center for Leadership at Florida International University, in partnership with the Network of Leadership Scholars. This award recognizes a dissertation’s outstanding contribution to the field of leadership. As the award recipient, Lu will deliver an invited presentation at the Leadership Research Colloquium at the FIU Center for Leadership in 2020. Lu’s winning dissertation is entitled “Global Leader or Cultural Outsider? The Divergent Effects of International Experiences on Leadership Effectiveness vs. Leadership Selection” (abstract since currently under embargo until April – additional information about his dissertation is included in this article). 

Maryam Farboodi has won the 2019 Young Researcher Award from the SCOR-PSE Chair on Macroeconomic Risk (created in 2018 by the SCOR Corporate Foundation for Science and the Paris School of Economics), honoring outstanding research by a junior economist (within 10 years of PhD) in the field of macroeconomic risk. The award recognizes Farboodi for her “particularly stimulating and promising” work in financial intermediation and deliberate exposure to counterparty risk:  “innovative research, both in method and hypothesis, on the relationships between financial institutions and how these relationships may contribute to endogenous growth in systemic risk,” according to André Levy-Lang, chairman of the SCOR Foundation for Science. Farboodi presented her working paper entitled “Intermediation and Voluntary Exposure to Counterparty Risk” (October 2017) and received her award at a ceremony in July 2019 in Paris during the SCOR-PSE Chair annual conference.

Bill Aulet has won the 2019 Outstanding Contributions to Advancing Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Higher Education Award from the Deshpande Symposium on Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Higher Education. Co-founded by the Deshpande Foundation and UMass Lowell, the Deshpande Symposium convenes participants from the worlds of academia, policy, and practice to discuss best practices in integrating entrepreneurship throughout their college and university communities.

The Awards Committee cited Aulet’s “dedication and commitment to fostering entrepreneurship across higher education” not just within MIT “but across the world”; his “fresh thinking”; his having helped launch “multiple programs at MIT including delta v, Beehive, Hacking Medicine, and several courses,” and his having “spread the entrepreneurial spirit internationally” with his “book, videos, and numerous presentations.”

Catherine Tucker has won the TechSIG-Lazaridis Prize for Best Paper in Innovation, Technology and Interactivity for 2019.  Along with co-author Anja Lambrecht, Tucker was honored for the paper, “Algorithmic Bias? An Empirical Study of Apparent Gender-Based Discrimination in the Display of STEM Career Ads,” published in Management Science in 2019.