PhD
Marketing
MIT Sloan’s Marketing group equips students with a deep understanding of behavioral and management science theories and methods, drawing from disciplines such as behavioral science, economics, operations research, and statistics. The group benefits from the pioneering work of faculty members like Duncan Simester, who explores consumer behavior and pricing strategies; Juanjuan Zhang, known for her research on social interactions and marketing; and Catherine Tucker, who investigates digital marketing and privacy issues. This collaborative environment fosters innovative research that addresses key challenges in marketing, including customer satisfaction and the psychological aspects of consumer behavior.
Research from Marketing Faculty
Growth markets are node-scarce, not idea-scarce
For years, physicists tried to answer a deceptively simple question: why do some things like cities, ideas, innovation ecosystems grow disproportionately larger and more influential than others? Why do a few nodes attract attention, resources, and talent, while most remain peripheral?
Looking ahead at AI and work in 2026
Experts in artificial intelligence from MIT Sloan are keeping an eye on the human-LLM accuracy gap, AI guardrails, and other trends.
Why aren’t AI open models more widely used?
Open-source and open-weight AI models perform well and cost less — but users opt for closed models 80% of the time, according to new research.
From Navy Captain to CEO: A Veteran Alum on Leadership, Innovation, and the MIT EMBA
From Navy captain to CEO, Van Gurley shares how the MIT Executive MBA transformed his leadership approach, fueled innovation at Metron, and prepared him to lead a mission-driven national security company through growth and change.
Select Marketing Faculty
Full-Time Faculty
Sinan Aral
David Austin Professor of Management
Sinan Aral is a global authority on business analytics; award-winning researcher; entrepreneur, and venture capitalist who is ranked among the top 50 management scholars in the world and was rated the World’s “Top Digital Thinker” in 2021. He is the…
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Rahul Bhui
Sarofim Family Career Development Associate Professor
Rahul Bhui is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and affiliate faculty of the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society. His research combines cognitive science, computational neuroscience, and behavioral…
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Sharmila C. Chatterjee
Senior Lecturer, Marketing
Sharmila C. Chatterjee is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing and is the Academic Head for the MBA Track in Enterprise Management (EM) launched at MIT Sloan in Fall 2012. Chatterjee teaches the graduate course in B2B Marketing and is deeply engaged in…
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Example PhD Thesis Topics
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Jennifer Allen (2024)
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Matthew Cashman (2024)
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Keyan Li (2024)
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Marat Ibragimov (2023)
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Yiqun Cao (2022)