Media Releases

Excellence in Teaching and Research Honoured at University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management

March 10, 2017

Toron­to, ON – Sev­en fac­ul­ty mem­bers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s Rot­man School of Man­age­ment have received awards for achieve­ments in research and teach­ing.

Four fac­ul­ty mem­bers were award­ed with the 2016 Roger Mar­tin Awards for Excel­lence in Research and Teach­ing. Estab­lished by Prof. Roger Mar­tin, a for­mer Dean of the Rot­man School, the awards are pre­sent­ed annu­al­ly to fac­ul­ty mem­bers who have achieved dis­tinc­tion for their teach­ing or research activ­i­ties. The co-win­ners of the Roger Mar­tin Excel­lence in Research Award are Prof. Joshua Gans and Prof. Peter Christof­fersen. The co-win­ners of the Roger Mar­tin Excel­lence in Teach­ing Award are Prof. Mikhail Simutin and Prof.  Avi Gold­farb.

Two fac­ul­ty mem­bers have also received the new­ly estab­lished Out­stand­ing Research Impact Award which rec­og­nizes research and intel­lec­tu­al activ­i­ties which have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on exter­nal non-aca­d­e­m­ic audi­ences includ­ing the busi­ness and pub­lic pol­i­cy com­mu­ni­ties both local­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly. The co-win­ners for 2016/17 are Prof. Nina Mažar and Prof. Dilip Soman.

Prof. Ajay Agraw­al is the win­ner of the Dis­tin­guished Schol­ar­ly Con­tri­bu­tion Award which rec­og­nizes and encour­ages research and research-relat­ed ser­vice that con­tribute to the devel­op­ment of a robust and dynam­ic research envi­ron­ment with­in and beyond the Rot­man com­mu­ni­ty.

Joshua Gans is a pro­fes­sor of strate­gic man­age­ment and hold­er of the Jef­frey S. Skoll Chair of Tech­ni­cal Inno­va­tion and Entre­pre­neur­ship at the Rot­man School (with a cross appoint­ment in the Depart­ment of Eco­nom­ics). Since 2013, he has also been Area Coor­di­na­tor of Strate­gic Man­age­ment. He is also Chief Econ­o­mist of the Rot­man School’s Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab. He holds a Ph.D. from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty and an hon­ors degree in eco­nom­ics from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Queens­land. His research is pri­mar­i­ly focused on under­stand­ing the eco­nom­ic dri­vers of inno­va­tion and sci­en­tif­ic progress, and has core inter­ests in dig­i­tal strat­e­gy and antitrust pol­i­cy. His recent book, The Dis­rup­tion Dilem­ma, pub­lished by The MIT Press in 2016, explained why some com­pa­nies have suc­cess­ful­ly man­aged dis­rup­tion and why some have not.

Peter Christof­fersen is a pro­fes­sor of finance at the Rot­man School and holds the TSX Chair in Cap­i­tal Mar­kets. He is also a fel­low at the Bank of Cana­da. His main research inter­ests are in volatil­i­ty mod­el­ing for option val­u­a­tion as well as in devel­op­ing back test­ing pro­ce­dures for risk man­age­ment sys­tems. He is the author of the Ele­ments of Finan­cial Risk Man­age­ment, Sec­ond Edi­tion (Aca­d­e­m­ic Press, Decem­ber 2011). He has won research awards from the Q‑Group, KPMG, the Mon­tre­al Exchange, and STOXX. He has giv­en invit­ed lec­tures at the Bank of Amer­i­ca, the Bank of Cana­da, the Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank, the Board of Gov­er­nors of the Fed­er­al Reserve, and the Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund among oth­ers. Since 2012, he has also been a mem­ber of the Mod­el Val­i­da­tion Coun­cil at the Board of Gov­er­nors of the U.S. Fed­er­al Reserve Sys­tem. His PhD is from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia.

Mikhail Simutin is an assis­tant pro­fes­sor of finance at the Rot­man School. Since 2012 he has taught a finance course in the first year of the Rot­man MBA pro­gram reg­u­lar­ly receiv­ing high marks from his stu­dents in their course eval­u­a­tions. His research inter­ests include empir­i­cal asset pric­ing, mutu­al funds, and risk and per­for­mance mea­sure­ment. His work has appeared in Jour­nal of Finan­cial Eco­nom­ics and Finan­cial Man­age­ment. His PhD is from the Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia.

Avi Gold­farb is the Elli­son Pro­fes­sor of Mar­ket­ing at the Rot­man School. He teach­es cours­es on data, mar­ket­ing, and dig­i­ti­za­tion in sev­er­al of the Rot­man School’s pro­grams. His research focus­es on under­stand­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges of the dig­i­tal econ­o­my and he has pub­lished over 60 aca­d­e­m­ic arti­cles in a wide range of jour­nals.  He is Chief Data Sci­en­tist of the Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab, Senior Edi­tor at Mar­ket­ing Sci­ence, a fel­low at the Behav­iour­al Eco­nom­ics in Action at Rot­man research group, and a Research Asso­ciate at the Nation­al Bureau of Eco­nom­ic Research. He received his Ph.D. in eco­nom­ics from North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty.

Nina Mažar is an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of mar­ket­ing. Dilip Soman is a pro­fes­sor of mar­ket­ing and holds the Corus Chair in Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Strat­e­gy at the Rot­man School. Profs. Mazar and Soman are co-direc­tors of the Behav­iour­al Eco­nom­ics in Action at Rot­man (BEAR) which is a research clus­ter that part­ners with non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions, com­pa­nies, and gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies to use research find­ings to solve social prob­lems such as finan­cial lit­er­a­cy, obe­si­ty, and fraud. BEAR, and its part­ners, com­bine decades of research in deci­sion-mak­ing with empir­i­cal­ly-test­ed tools to facil­i­tate behav­iour­al change.

Prof. Soman’s research is in the area of behav­iour­al eco­nom­ics and its appli­ca­tions to con­sumer well­be­ing, mar­ket­ing and pol­i­cy. He works with ideas42 and serves as advi­sor to a num­ber of wel­fare orga­ni­za­tions. In 2016, he was appoint­ed to the Privy Coun­cil Office in the Cana­di­an Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment as a Senior Pol­i­cy Advi­sor in its Inno­va­tion Hub in Ottawa. His PhD is from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to.

Prof. Mažar is a Fel­low of the Sci­ence Lead­er­ship Pro­gram in Cana­da and was named one of “The 40 Most Out­stand­ing B‑School Profs Under 40 In The World” by Poets&Quants in 2014. With her focus on behav­iour­al eco­nom­ics, she inves­ti­gates con­sumer behav­iour, how it devi­ates from stan­dard eco­nom­ic assump­tions, and its impli­ca­tions for pol­i­cy. She serves as advi­sor to a num­ber of orga­ni­za­tions around the world. In 2015, Nina was appoint­ed to the World Bank as the Senior Behav­iour­al Sci­en­tist of its new Glob­al INsights Ini­tia­tive (GINI) in Wash­ing­ton, DC. She holds a Dr. rer. pol. (Ph.D. equiv­a­lent) from Johannes Guten­berg Uni­ver­si­ty in Ger­many.

Ajay Agraw­al is the Peter Munk Pro­fes­sor of Entre­pre­neur­ship at the Rot­man School and the Founder and Aca­d­e­m­ic Direc­tor of the School’s Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab. The CDL lever­ages the Rot­man School’s lead­ing fac­ul­ty and indus­try net­work as well as its loca­tion in the heart of Canada’s busi­ness cap­i­tal to accel­er­ate mas­sive­ly scal­able, tech­nol­o­gy-based ven­tures that have the poten­tial to trans­form our eco­nom­ic and social land­scape. Since its incep­tion, com­pa­nies who have grad­u­at­ed from the pro­gram have gone on to cre­ate more than $950 mil­lion (CDN) in equi­ty val­ue.  Prof. Agraw­al is also a research asso­ciate at the Nation­al Bureau of Eco­nom­ic Research and Co-Founder of The Next 36. He teach­es cours­es on busi­ness strat­e­gy, inno­va­tion, and entre­pre­neur­ship and con­ducts research on the eco­nom­ics of inno­va­tion and cre­ativ­i­ty. His PhD is from the Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia.

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment is locat­ed in the heart of Canada’s com­mer­cial and cul­tur­al cap­i­tal and is part of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, one of the world’s top 20 research uni­ver­si­ties. The Rot­man School fos­ters a new way to think that enables our grad­u­ates to tack­le today’s glob­al busi­ness and soci­etal chal­lenges.  For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

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Ken McGuf­fin
Man­ag­er, Media Rela­tions
Rot­man School of Man­age­ment
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
Tel: 416–946-3818
E‑mail: mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca