Ipsos-CARD Dissertation Proposal Award

This past fall, PhD students from around the world submitted interdisciplinary dissertation proposals to the second annual dissertation proposal competition co-sponsored by the Fox School’s Department of Marketing Center for Applied Research in Decision Making (CARD) and Ipsos. All applications were reviewed by a committee in a blind manner, and resulted in the selection of two winners. 

Please join us on March 15 [12pmET/9amPT] to hear about the winning proposals from:

• Winner: Billy Mitchell, Temple University. “Using Neural Synchrony to Predict Social and Non-Social Decision-Making Under Uncertainty.”
• Runner up: Jimin Nam, Harvard University. “Calculated Complaints: Understanding Strategic Citations of Discrimination in Customer Service.”

Ipsos regularly partners with the CARD lab at Temple University. The CARD lab mission to promote applied, interdisciplinary and multi-method research in decision-making and facilitate the translation of findings into actionable insights for business and society fits with Ipsos’ vision of leveraging academic insights for the most advanced and rigorous science that can drive practical solutions for clients.

This partnership aligned and supports Ipsos’ vision of promoting and enabling good science as Vinod Venkatraman, associate professor of marketing and director of CARD proposed the competition to recognize PhD student research that focuses not only on interesting scientific discovery but also on the practical application of their work and its translational value to the industry.

“We thought that running a dissertation proposal competition would be a good idea to encourage students working in interdisciplinary areas, and show them that there is value in the work that they do,” says Venkatraman. "We also wanted to use this opportunity to engage students to think about the translational impact of their work".

According to Rich Timpone, the Acting Managing Director of the Global Science Organization at Ipsos, “our goal was to champion quality science and recognize the next generation of up-and-coming scholars. This year's winners, Billy Mitchell from Temple University and runner-up Jimin Nam from Harvard University, are paving the way in fields that are directly relevant to Ipsos' missing of bringing value to our clients through consumer research. Mitchell's innovative research offers a novel approach to understanding consumer decision-making processes under uncertainty, a key aspect of our work at Ipsos. Similarly, Nam's timely work on claims of discrimination on social media are highly relevant to brands as well. These academic research projects are not only pushing the boundaries of scientific understanding but are also addressing real-world challenges in consumer research, shedding light on areas that hold significant implications for the future of marketing".