Message from the dean: Pat Hopkins, Kelley’s passionate advocate for further success

Posted on March 24, 2025 by George Vlahakis

Pat Hopkins

As I begin my role as dean of the Kelley School of Business, I am humbled and energized to work alongside our remarkable community of stakeholders toward our collective mission.

I arrived in Bloomington as a newly minted PhD in August 1995, with little knowledge of our school (which wasn’t even called Kelley then), our larger university, or even the state of Indiana. These last 30 years have expanded my world beyond anything I could have imagined. I quickly learned how lucky I was that Kelley found me and offered me a home.

Over the years, I directly benefited from its collegial and nurturing culture, its creative and entrepreneurial spirit, and the dedication of its hundreds of faculty and staff members and thousands of alums. I am in turn committed to protecting and caring for our people and the school we’ve inherited from the generations who came before us.

Our faculty are leaders in their fields and essential contributors as we refine our curriculum, collaborate across a range of partnerships, develop innovative programs across academic areas, and apply research to myriad issues facing the nation and the world. Our faculty’s remarkable focus, drive, and productivity distinguish us daily among peer institutions and propel us to new heights. Most recently, thanks to our remarkable faculty, the UT Dallas Top Business School Research Rankings placed us at No. 9 in North America and No. 10 worldwide.

Pat Hopkins now leads the school where he has taught for 30 years.

Our staff have been unparalleled, inspiring partners to me, especially since I entered administration. Every day, our staff makes this place run by advising our students, telling the Kelley story to stakeholders far and wide, ensuring an effective and efficient allocation of resources, supporting our faculty, deepening our relationships with alumni, and performing thousands of other vital tasks—sometimes on short timelines—which continually set our school apart.

Our incredible alumni community, 133,000+ strong, leads businesses and communities across the world with Kelley’s deepest values, and we are inspired by the connections and collaborations we see sparking among them daily. Many alumni recruit our students for their companies, return to campus to sit on panels and present to students, and host productive networking events—which all shows how deeply this remarkable community cares about our school and about fostering the next generation of principled leaders.

As I enter this new role, I also reflect on the exceptional leaders we’ve had during my 30 years at Kelley, including Deans John Rau, Dan Dalton, Dan Smith, Idie Kesner, and Ash Soni. My heartfelt thanks and admiration go out to each of them for their leadership, sacrifice, integrity, and unrelenting efforts to elevate our already excellent school over the years. Ash has been a particularly important mentor and friend, and I am deeply grateful for his selflessness and for all he has taught me about facing challenges with patience and grace and about growing the relationships that make our community thrive.

I look forward to serving as Kelley’s passionate advocate and as a tireless partner to all our stakeholders as we rise toward even higher excellence in education, scholarship, and service.

Warm regards,

Pat Hopkins

Dean and Conrad Prebys Professor

Kelley investment management students win prestigious Balyasny Asset Management stock pick competition

Posted on March 12, 2025 by George Vlahakis

Members of the winning Kelley team, from left, Bao Nguyen, Jack Buchenberger and Sayer Birch. (Photo courtesy: Balyasny Asset Management)

NEW YORK – A team of three students from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business finished in first place in the prestigious Balyasny Asset Management Winter Stock Pitch Competition, which attracts top talent from business schools across the country and provides them with invaluable experience they will use in the future.

In mid-January, students at more than 30 business schools received details about the competition and information about the stock they were pitching. On Feb. 11, the Kelley team learned they had made the top 10 based on their written stock recommendations. They then were asked to provide a video explaining their stock pitch by Feb. 17.

Two days later, they learned they had been selected as one of five finalists.

The three sophomores — Sayer Birch, Bao Nguyen and Jack Buchenberger – traveled to New York City to make their pitches before a panel of judges on Feb. 28 at Balyasny Asset Management’s New York offices on the 35th floor of the General Motors Building.

Kelley student Bao Nguyen makes a point during the presentation. (Photo courtesy: Balyasny Asset Management)

Birch, Nguyen and Buchenberger emerged as the winners, along with a team from the University of Alabama, besting teams from Duke University, New York University and the University of Tennessee. Each first-place team shared a $3,000 prize.

BAM’s contest provides an extraordinary opportunity for students to demonstrate their investment prowess, gain invaluable feedback, and network with industry experts. The top teams in the final round also were given an opportunity to interview with the firm’s equities business for summer 2026 internship opportunities.

“Our presentation stood out because of the proprietary research we conducted,” said Buchenberger, who is from Fishers, Ind. “While all the groups had great pitches, the proprietary research really differentiated us.”

“We received praise for our creative research, and a judge even came up to us asking to see our code after the event, “added Bao Nguyen, who is from Hanoi, Vietnam. “Furthermore, our preparation and composure also set us up for success. The projector turned off during our presentation, forcing us to present without slides for two minutes. We stood tall, smiled at the audience and kept going like during the countless practice runs we did leading up to the event.”

Birch, Nguyen and Buchenberger are part of Kelley’s Investment Management Workshop, which prepares students for successful careers in equity research, sales and trading, and private wealth management. They also are enrolled in Kelley’s highly selective Knall-Cohen Fund course, where they how to analyze industries and individual stocks. In the class, they write a report complete with an analytic model and present their stock idea to a board composed of investment professionals.

The students credited the guidance they received from their advisors, Robert Jennings, a professor emeritus of finance who has been associated with the Kelley School for 44 years, Dan Aron, a 1983 Kelley alumnus who has more than 35 years of Wall Street experience, including stints as partner and head trader at Levin Capital Strategies and as a vice president at Salomon Brothers; and Eric Crigler, finance lecturer and director of the Knall-Cohen Fund.

“The Investment Management Workshop and Knall-Cohen do an excellent job of preparing students to research and pitch stocks and that definitely shined through throughout the entire competition process,” said Birch, who is from Brooklyn, N.Y. “We have one of the best educational programs specifically for stock pitching. I’m very grateful to Bob, Dan, Eric and others for their part in helping to develop that over the years.”

Balyasny Asset Management’s competitions — held twice a year — are viewed by the firm as a regular part of its recruiting pipeline. (Photo courtesy: Balyasny Asset Management)

For the three students, the competition was a return trip to the Big Apple. Every January, students in the Investment Management Workshop visit 15 firms over a whirlwind three days.

“This gave us a first taste of Wall Street’s intensity and dynamism. We were also taught professional communication and how investment research worked. Everywhere we went, we knew to ask specific questions to the firm and communicated professionally at every turn,” Nguyen said. “As we’ve been told, the workshop turns us from students to colleagues and there’s no second chance at giving a first impression.”

“I knew BAM was inviting senior leaders and professionals to the networking dinner (the night before the competition) and felt both nervous and excited,” he added. “There, we met the head of equities, director of research and several portfolio managers, who were very down-to-earth and welcomed any questions we had. It was fascinating to learn about the research and decision-making process behind their past investments.”

Balyasny visits Kelley, shares insights with students

Coincidentally, on Feb. 20 the Kelley School welcomed Dmitry Balyasny, BAM’s managing partner and chief investment officer, for a fireside chat with students.

Balyasny is the firm’s founder, chief investment officer and managing partner. Balyasny Asset Management, L.P. began as a single, small office in Chicago trading mostly long/short equity and has grown into an institutional global platform with investment strategies spanning across equities long/short, macro, equities arbitrage, credit, commodities, systematic, and growth equity. He chairs BAM’s Investment Committee.

He began his trading career with Schonfeld Securities in 1994. Balyasny holds a bachelor’s degree in finance from Loyola University Chicago. He is involved in a variety of philanthropic activities in Chicago, Illinois.

In a conversation with Josh Perry, executive associate dean for academic programs, Balyasny discussed his journey as a founder, how his firm identifies talent, and the skills that he believes are most important for an investor.

Research offers new direction on how disaster relief organizations should communicate through social media

Posted on March 3, 2025 by George Vlahakis

Using controlled burns, fire crews create a barrier in the foothills of Carpinteria, Calif., on Dec. 11, 2024, in the hopes of containing the Thomas Fire. (Credit: Joseph Philipson).

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – According to the basics of crisis communications theory, disaster relief organizations should always speak with “one voice.” As demonstrated through recent events such as the Los Angeles wildfires, information these organizations provide through social media can be vital to saving lives and protecting property.

But while this approach usually is true during the initial stages of a disaster, new research finds that messaging can be more effective when relief organizations reach out with information that is tailored for different social media audiences later in the recovery process.

Eunae Yoo

At that point, learning where to go for relief and to reconnect with loved ones is crucial for some, while for others obtaining information about how to provide financial support, such as through online donations, is more helpful.

Two professors at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business – Eunae Yoo and Lu (Lucy) Yan — joined colleagues from the University of Notre Dame and McGill University in Canada in studying the effectiveness of disaster responses using Twitter data from the Canadian Red Cross.

In their research, they found a nearly 30% increase in social media engagement when different audiences were targeted in separate accounts after conditions became less uncertain.

Disaster relief organizations — such as national societies in the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies — often maintain several accounts to represent unique operational entities, such as their national headquarters and regional, state and local branches.

They found that convergence across a disaster relief organization’s social media accounts does not always lead to the best outcome.

Lu (Lucy) Yan

“Engagement is 4.3% higher with a match of content creation decisions during the response phase rather than a mismatch,” Yoo and Yan and their co-authors wrote. “We provide strong evidence for engagement increasing when accounts with the same DRO produce convergent content in the response phase. On the other hand, a mismatch of content creation decisions is 29.6% more effective for engagement during the recovery phase.”

Their paper, “Speak with One Voice? Examining Content Coordination and Social Media Engagement During Disasters,” was published last year in the journal Information Systems Research. Other authors are Alfonso Pedraza-Martinez, a former Kelley faculty member who is now the Greg and Patty Fox Collegiate Professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations at Notre Dame, and Changseung (Chang) Yoo, an assistant professor, Desautels Faculty of Management, at McGill.

In the paper, the researchers cite as an example two tweets posted by the Canadian Red Cross on Twitter (now X) after the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire in Canada. One tweet provided instructions to disaster victims on how to register for aid and the other contained a link to make an online donation.

As a result, the tweets garnered about 280,000 engagements – including retweets and likes – and resulted in more than 36,000 donations that represented about 60% of total donations from all social media platforms made the CRC’s response and 70% of total value.

Overall, they analyzed 934 tweets from the CRC’s headquarters account, which received 33,861 retweets and 34,722 likes. They also looked at 629 tweets from the CRC’s Alberta provincial account, which received 4,802 retweets and 2,862 likes. They measured engagement as the total number of likes, retweets, clicks and replies and used text analysis to identify whether the audience were victims or supporters. They analyzed how audience match between accounts affected user engagement.

The paper provides new direction on how national and local accounts of relief organizations should coordinate their social media content.

“We find that a match of content creation decisions during the response phase is more effective at increasing engagement for local accounts rather than national accounts,” said Yoo, assistant professor of operations and decision technologies and a Grant Thornton Scholar, and Yan, the John & Esther Reese Professor of operations and decision technologies. “Local accounts should follow the lead of national accounts regarding the supply of information in the response phase.”

The authors acknowledge limitations in their research, since it is based on a study of catastrophic wildfires, which occur suddenly, while other types of disasters – such as strong storms — take more time to develop and thus involve an emergency preparedness phase. Another aspect for future study is coordinating a disaster relief organization’s accounts during a long-term recovery.

The paper has received considerable notice in disaster relief practitioners and humanitarian, including in articles published by disaster management platforms where best practices for disaster mitigation, preparation, response and recovery are discussed.

Gig economy may serve as a substitute for those seeking other, more permanent work

Posted on March 3, 2025 by George Vlahakis

Many income-shocked workers view the gig economy as a short-term solution to buffer consumption.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – While traditionally laid off employees have relied on consumer credit and unemployment insurance to maintain consumption, research finds that the gig economy serves as a substitute for many seeking other, more permanent work.

In a paper published in the Journal of Financial Economics, researchers matched anonymized data from on credit profiles with unemployment insurance and found that laid-off Americans with access to Uber as a source of income were less reliant on household debt.

They also experienced fewer delinquencies and were less likely to apply for unemployment insurance benefits. Lower reliance on credit and insurance allows workers to avoid potential negative consequences, such as over-borrowing that can lead to a debt trap and reduced motivation to work due to dependence on unemployment insurance programs.

Ankit Kalda

“Anecdotal evidence from recent government shutdowns suggests many income-shocked workers view the gig economy as a short-term solution to buffer consumption,” co-wrote Ankit Kalda, associate professor of finance and the Jerome Bess Faculty Fellow at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business.

“The effects of Uber’s entry are stronger in states with less generous unemployment insurance benefits. This is consistent with workers weighing the tradeoff between two short-term options, the gig economy and unemployment insurance.”

The findings appear in the article, “Gig labor: Trading safety nets for steering wheels.” Other authors of the paper are Vyacheslav Fos of Boston College, Naser Hamdi of Equifax Inc., and Jordan Nickerson of the University of Washington.

The researchers used data from Equifax. They matched it with information about Uber’s introduction into various markets across the country between June 2012 and February 2016. They found that workers with access to ride-sharing opportunities saw a relative decrease in total outstanding credit balances of $689 – or 0.9% — compared with those who did not. Delinquency rates fell by 4.9%.

Eligible car owners were 3.3% less likely to lean on unemployment insurance programs where Uber was present. Following Uber’s entry into a market, workers with access to the ride-sharing platform were 4.8% less likely to receive unemployment beneﬁts.

“Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that the decrease in unemployment usage resulted in a yearly reduction of between $492 million and $750 million in unemployment benefits distributed by government agencies,” Kalda said.

Kalda and his colleagues found economically significant results when they restricted their sample to those who regained formal employment within a year of being laid off.

“If the ride-sharing platform reduces labor market frictions, the ability of a worker to buffer their labor provision by participating on the ride-share platform may reduce the hardship associated with job loss,” he added. “Gig labor can provide a safety net for those seeking more permanent work in the formal market.”

When we feel a loss of personal control, we seek out others like ourselves, research says

Posted on March 3, 2025 by George Vlahakis

Feeling a lack of personal control often leads to people forming homogeneous teams, stifling collaboration.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Amid these turbulent times, as our society comes to grips with headlines about wars, the latest health scares, rising prices and social upheaval, people feeling a loss of personal control tend to seek out others who are more like themselves.

That’s according to new research from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business.

Researchers consistently found when people experienced a loss of personal control, they were more likely to be drawn to those who resembled them, in race, religion, socioeconomic class or personality characteristics.

Jessica Paek

“Our research shows that feeling a lack of personal control often leads to people forming homogeneous teams, thus limiting exposure to other, diverse perspectives and, ultimately, stifling innovation and collaboration,” said Jessica Paek, assistant professor of organizational behavior and human resources at Kelley.

This preference is explained by a greater desire for order and predictability, the paper concluded.

“People tended to prefer coworkers who resembled them because they were more likely to share the same understanding of the world and seem more predictable than those who were different,” Paek said. “Our findings also may partly explain the sharp increase in social division that we are seeing lately — from racial and religious segregation to heightened political polarization.”

The article, “Threats to personal control fuel similarity attraction,” appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Other authors were Anyi Ma, assistant professor of management at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Fangzhou Liu, assistant professor of management at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China; and Jae Yun Kim, assistant professor and the Richard Morantz and Sheree Walder Morantz Professor in Business Ethics at the University of Manitoba.

While their findings may be seen as a truism, little previously has been known about when people are more or less likely to favor those like themselves. The researchers set out to better understand what motivates this behavior, especially as societies are becoming more diverse.

The findings are based on 11 correlational and experimental studies, including an analysis of data involving nearly 90,000 people from the World Values Survey (42,118 were women and 45,914 men). Across all the studies, Paek and her colleagues consistently found that the loss of personal control consistently predicted the control-motivated preference for similar others.

In one study involving data from 60 countries, they found that those who indicated a lower sense of personal control were less likely to prefer having neighbors who had a different religion, race or spoke another language.

In her research, Paek investigates how people can better pursue their goals in organizations and society. “The aim of my work is to better understand the barriers to successful goal pursuit and the interpersonal dynamics that aid or hinder goal pursuit in organizations,” she said.

“Ultimately, our work highlights how a fundamental human tendency — our desire to affiliate with others like us — can lead to challenges in building more inclusive, innovative, and cooperative workplaces in times of social unrest when we feel we lack control,” Paek and her colleagues wrote. “By highlighting the critical, explanatory role of the need for order and predictability, our findings are important for businesses looking to create resilient, inclusive environments that can withstand times of uncertainty.”

Vikram Pandit to serve as the next Poling Chair at the IU Kelley School of Business

Posted on February 27, 2025 by George Vlahakis

Vikram Pandit

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Vikram S. Pandit, chairman and chief executive officer of The Orogen Group and a prior CEO of Citigroup and president of Morgan Stanley, will visit the Indiana University Kelley School of Business as its Poling Chair of Business and Government.

Pandit will join former Kelley Dean John Rau as Poling Chair, whose appointment was announced last September and concludes this May.

Arrangements have been made for Pandit to meet with students in Kelley’s workshops in investment banking, investment management, private equity and capital markets, honors students, and faculty in finance. During his initial visit March 2-5, he will be at IU Bloomington, but he will meet with Kelley Indianapolis students and faculty when he returns in the fall.

Since its establishment in 1993 by the late Harold “Red” Poling, a Kelley School alumnus and Ford Motor Co. chairman and CEO for nearly a decade, the Poling Chair has been held by a variety of business and government leaders.

Pandit has spent his career in financial services and has been a participant in and a catalyst for some of the tremendous changes the industry has experienced over the last several decades.

He joined Morgan Stanley in 1983 and ultimately became president and chief operating officer of the company’s institutional securities and investment banking businesses. He left the firm after more than 20 years to become a founding member and chairman of the members committee of Old Lane, LP.

When Old Lane was acquired by Citigroup in 2007, Pandit became chairman and CEO of Citi Alternative Investments and later led Citi’s Institutional Clients Group. He became CEO of Citigroup in December 2007 and led the company during the most challenging economic and financial crisis since the Great Depression, successfully recapitalizing, restructuring, and revitalizing the company before he left in October 2012.

Orogen Group is an operating company that makes significant long-term strategic investments in financial services companies and related businesses with proven business models. Pandit is a member of the board of directors of ExlService Holdings, Inc., Ardán Inc., Brillio, and JM Financial Credit Solutions Ltd.

Dean Ash Soni

“We are thrilled to welcome Vikram Pandit to the Kelley School. Our students and faculty will benefit from his variety of deep knowledge and extensive experience in investment management and finance at the highest level in the corporate world,” said Ash Soni, dean of the Kelley School and the Sungkyunkwan Professor. “His perspectives will be most appreciated by our students, as they prepare to begin their careers and possibly make client decisions framed by challenges similar those Vikram has faced.”

Pandit is returning to IU Bloomington and the Kelley School, where he briefly taught as a lecturer in finance at the Kelley School in 1982 and 1983.

“I am delighted to be named the Poling Chair of Business and Government and to join Dean Ash Soni for a visit to the Indiana University Kelley School of Business,” Pandit said. “In many ways I consider Indiana University to be my honorary alma mater, because I learned so much from the faculty and students. I have many fond memories of the time I spent on campus and the great relationships I forged here.”

Pandit earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in engineering from Columbia University and received his Ph.D. in finance from Columbia in 1986. He is a member of the Board of Overseers of Columbia Business School and a member of the Board of Visitors of the Columbia School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Pandit follows a long line of successful leaders, many of them Kelley alumni, who have served as Poling Chairs. They have included top executives at major companies, including Janet Foutty, former chair and CEO of Deloitte Consulting LLP; Jeff Fettig, former chairman and CEO of Whirlpool Corporation; Elizabeth Acton, retired chief financial officer of Comerica and a former vice president and treasurer of Ford Motor Co.; Randall L. Tobias, chairman emeritus of Eli Lilly and Co., and former vice chairman of AT&T Corp; and Bob Eckert, former CEO of Mattel Inc. and Kraft.

They also have included two former state governors –Maryland’s Martin O’Malley and Indiana’s Evan Bayh — Hollywood producer Kristin Hahn, Indian parliamentarian Deepender Singh Hooda, the Countess of Frederiksborg in Denmark Alexandra Christina, former U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, and Mae C. Jemison, the first African American female astronaut.

Indiana University appoints Patrick E. Hopkins as new dean of the Kelley School of Business

Posted on February 25, 2025 by George Vlahakis

Patrick Hopkins, the next dean of the Indiana University Kelley School of Business.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Patrick E. Hopkins has been appointed dean of the Indiana University Kelley School of Business, effective March 17, 2025. A distinguished member of the Kelley faculty since 1995 and current vice dean, Hopkins is an accomplished leader in business education with extensive experience in both academia and industry. He succeeds Ash Soni, who is concluding a two-year tenure as dean and will return to the faculty after a sabbatical leave.

“Patrick is taking the helm of one of Indiana University’s most renowned programs,” said Pamela Whitten, president of Indiana University. “The Kelley School of Business has extraordinary faculty who provide a world-class educational experience for our exceptional students. As dean, I am confident that Dr. Hopkins will navigate the new opportunities in higher education to raise Kelley to new heights.”

IU President Pamela Whitten

In his new position as dean, Hopkins will oversee the academic and administrative operations of the Kelley School of Business at both the Bloomington and Indianapolis campuses. His priorities will include enhancing the school’s global impact, strengthening its dual-campus structure and driving forward the school’s student-centered vision for the future of business education. He will also continue Kelley’s global leadership in online and innovative educational programs and deepen the school’s connections with alumni and corporate partners to offer unparalleled learning experiences for students.

“We are excited to welcome Pat as the new leader of the Kelley School of Business,” said Rahul Shrivastav, IU Bloomington provost and executive vice president. “As dean, he will be pivotal in strengthening Kelley’s reputation as an entrepreneurial, globally minded leader. Aligned with the IU 2030 Strategic Plan, Kelley will continue to expand its impactful corporate partnerships and provide students with unparalleled experiential learning opportunities, ensuring they are prepared to lead in an ever-evolving global marketplace.”

Hopkins’s leadership will also focus on ensuring that the school advances its mission to transform the lives of students, organizations and society through groundbreaking faculty research and service. The Kelley School of Business has been a longtime leader in interdisciplinary collaboration and experiential and project-based learning, and Hopkins is committed to building upon these strengths.

“With campuses in both Bloomington and Indianapolis, Kelley is uniquely positioned to graduate the business leaders of tomorrow for our city, state and region,” said Latha Ramchand, IU Indianapolis inaugural chancellor and executive vice president. “IU Indianapolis Provost Gladden and I look forward to partnering with Pat to strengthen integration between our campuses and advance the school’s mission of excellence in business education and innovation.”

Kelley’s strong connections with alumni and the business community, along with its globally recognized online programs, provide a rich foundation for future growth. As the Kelley School moves forward under Hopkins’s leadership, it will continue to leverage its growing business partnerships to expand its offerings and provide students with the skills and experience needed to lead in the dynamic world of business.

“I am honored to serve as the next dean of the Kelley School of Business,” Hopkins said. “Kelley has long been a leader in shaping the future of business education, driven by groundbreaking research and faculty leadership in their disciplines. I look forward to collaborating with our exceptional faculty, staff and students to further strengthen Kelley’s academic rigor, expand our research contributions and continue to enhance our impact both in the classroom and beyond.”

Hopkins has been a member of the Kelley School faculty since 1995, earning tenure in 2002 and being promoted to full professor of accounting in 2010. He has held a variety of academic roles, including a visiting associate professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. Prior to joining Indiana University, Hopkins worked at the University of Texas at Austin as a teaching and research assistant and served as a lecturer and undergraduate academic advisor at the University of Florida’s Fisher School of Accounting.

At the Kelley School, Hopkins has served numerous leadership roles, including vice dean, executive associate dean of academic programs and Conrad Prebys professor, chair of undergraduate programs, Glaubinger Chair for Undergraduate Leadership and chair of graduate accounting programs and SungKyunKwan professor.

With an extensive academic background and research focus on professional judgment, decision-making and the effects of accounting and auditing in capital markets, Hopkins is recognized for his work in these fields, which are critical to the evolving landscape of business. He earned a doctorate in accounting from the University of Texas at Austin, with minors in psychology and statistics, and holds both a master’s and bachelor’s in accountancy from the University of Florida, graduating with the highest honors. Hopkins is also a Certified Public Accountant, having earned the Elijah Watt Sells Award in 1987.

Founded in 1920, the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University is one of the largest and most prestigious business schools in the world. With campuses in Bloomington and Indianapolis, the school offers a comprehensive range of undergraduate, MBA and executive education programs, while also being a global leader in research and innovation in business education. With more than 15,000 students and over 133,000 living alumni worldwide, the school consistently ranks among the top business schools in the U.S. and globally. The Kelley Direct Online MBA program is ranked No. 1 by U.S. News & World Report, Poets & Quants, and The Princeton Review. Kelley’s Full-Time MBA +Flex program also has been consistently ranked nationally, including as a top 20 U.S. program, according to U.S. News and QS Top MBA. U.S. News also rates Kelley undergraduate programs among the best, ranking it ninth overall. U.S. News also ranks the Evening MBA at Kelley Indianapolis as a top-ranked program at No. 13 among part-time MBAs.

All generic drugs are not equal, study finds; Generics made in India have more ‘severe adverse events’

Posted on February 19, 2025 by George Vlahakis

A key recommendation made in the study is for the FDA to make drug manufacturing location more transparent for consumers.

Editor’s note: This is a joint news release with The Ohio State University. Authors are available for interviews. Contact information is provided at the bottom of this article.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Generic drugs manufactured in India are linked to significantly more “severe adverse events” for patients who use them than equivalent drugs produced in the United States, a new study finds.

These adverse events included hospitalization, disability, and in a few cases, death. Researchers found that mature generic drugs, those that had been on the market for a relatively long time, were responsible for the finding.

The results show that all generic drugs are not equal, even though patients are often told that they are, said John Gray, co-author of the study and professor of operations at The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business.

“Drug manufacturing regulation, and therefore quality assurance practices, differ between emerging economies like India and advanced economies like the United States,” Gray said. “Where generic drugs are manufactured can make a significant difference.”

George Ball

“The FDA assures the public that all generics patterned after the same original drug should be equivalently safe and effective, however, this is not necessarily the case when it comes to generic drugs made in India,” added another co-author, George Ball, associate professor of operations and decision technologies and Weimer Faculty Fellow at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business.

Published recently in the journal Production and Operations Management, the research was led by In Joon Noh, who received his PhD at Ohio State and is now an assistant professor at Korea University. Other authors include Zachary Wright, who will receive his PhD from Ohio State and is now an assistant professor at Brigham Young University; and Hyunwoo Park, a former assistant professor at Ohio State, now at Seoul National University.

Several of the authors on this paper have worked closely with the Food and Drug Administration on federal grants and contracts, though this study was conducted completely independent of the FDA. These authors said working closely with the FDA gave them a deep appreciation for the importance of studying generic drug quality.

The study is significant because it is the first to be able to link a large sample of generic drugs to the actual plant where they were manufactured. The FDA will not release that information through the Freedom of Information Act process. But Gray said Noh figured out how to use what is called the Structured Product Labeling dataset to link drugs to the factory where they were produced.

“Overcoming this lack of transparency of drug manufacturing location is one of the major accomplishments of our study,” Gray said.

Another key to the study is that it matched the drugs made in India to the same drugs made in the United States. The drugs had the same active ingredients, the same dosage form and the same route of administration.

“That means the drugs are pharmaceutically equivalent and we are comparing apples to apples,” he said.

The researchers matched 2,443 drugs made in the United States and in emerging economies. Although the researchers included other countries in their analysis, 93% of generic drugs from emerging economy countries are made in India, so India data fully explained the results.

The researchers compared the frequency with which drugs were associated with adverse event reports for generic drugs made in India versus the matched drugs made in the United States. These adverse event reports are available in the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS).

Although the FAERS includes all reported adverse events, in this study the researchers only used those with the most serious outcomes, including hospitalization, disability and death.

Results showed that the number of severe adverse events for generic drugs made in India was 54% higher than for equivalent matched generic drugs made in the United States. That was after taking into account a variety of other factors that could have impacted the results, including the volume of drugs sold.

The findings were driven by drugs that had been on the market for a longer time.

“In the pharmaceutical industry, the older drugs get cheaper and cheaper and the competition gets more intense to hold down costs,” Gray said. “That may result in operations and supply chain issues that can compromise drug quality.”

Gray emphasized that the results shouldn’t be taken as a reason to stop overseas production of generic drugs.

“There are good manufacturers in India, there are bad manufacturers in the U.S., and we’re not advocating for ending offshore production of drugs or bashing India in any way,” Gray said.

“We believe this is a regulatory oversight issue that can be improved.”

Gray said one key issue is that when the FDA inspects plants that make generic drugs in the United States, the inspections are unannounced. But in overseas locations, the inspections are arranged in advance, which may allow manufacturers to hide problems and make it harder for the FDA to find those that do exist. Making all inspections unannounced could make a big difference, he said.

“A key recommendation we make in this study is for the FDA to make drug manufacturing location, such as the country of manufacture, and drug quality, transparent for consumers,” Ball added. “This can help create a market in which drug quality is incentivized more than it is today.”

Contacts:

George Ball, gpball@iu.edu

John Gray, Gray.402@osu.edu

Media contacts:

IU: George Vlahakis, 812-855-0846, vlahakis@iu.edu

Ohio State: Jeff Grabmeier, 614-292-8457; Grabmeier.1@osu.edu

Teams from Kelley School’s Master of Science in Finance program sweep the competition at Purdue event

Posted on February 4, 2025 by George Vlahakis

Winners of the 2025 Private Equity Case Competition at Purdue, Jose Suryadinata and Rodrigo Cyrillo Villa.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – For the second year in a row, Master of Science in Finance students from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business emerged as the winners of Purdue University’s Private Equity Case Competition.

This year, the three Kelley School teams swept the awards, also coming in second and third place, defeating a dozen other teams from the universities of Notre Dame and Illinois, Washington University of St. Louis and Purdue.

Members of the winning team were Jose Suryadinata and Rodrigo Cyrillo Villa. Coming in second place were Noah Barr, Daniel Borhi, Shashank Gaddamanagu and PJ Heilbronn, and in third place were Alvaro Portilla Vilches, Aman Manghi, Garrett Orten and James DeMaria.

Participants were asked to assess a potential buyout of Walgreens Boots Alliance, which has been rumored as the company pursues a turnaround strategy.

“The case itself presented it as an awesome opportunity to apply all the financial knowledge we spent the last four years building into an intricate real-world scenario,” said Villa, who originally is from São Paulo, Brazil. “Our last three weeks were mostly focused on preparing the best presentation that we could, and our hard work was recognized in the event.

“Everything we have learned up to this point built the foundation for us to be able to deliver the product that we did,” he added. “Our goal was to demonstrate what we are capable of and we’re both glad to have our efforts rewarded.”

Suryadinata, his teammate who originally is from Surabaya, Indonesia, added that they share the same work ethic, which “contributed to the quality of the product we presented.”

Scott Smart

Scott Smart, E-II Finance Faculty Fellow and chair of Finance Graduate Programs at the Kelley School, who helped the students prepare for the competition, agreed.

“The secret sauce is that Kelley attracts great students and trains them well,” Smart said. “Our curriculum is very rigorous and gives students opportunities to practice presentations in various contexts, and our faculty are engaged in helping students prepare for specific competitions.”

Last year only one Kelley student competed, Matteo Negrini, who won the event. Most teams had four members, but Matteo competed as an individual. That case asked students to develop a proposal to help Disney get through the challenging times it has faced in recent years. His strategy involved a divestiture of one of Disney’s business lines.

Negrini graduated in December and now is working as an analyst for a Wall Street firm that provides financial advisory solutions to large corporations worldwide. Following graduation in May, Villa will be moving to New York, where he’ll join EY as an associate in their Strategy and Transactions practice. Suryadinata looks forward to joining Micron Technology in Boise, Idaho, as part of its treasury team.

“The real differentiating factor from the program that enabled our teams to stand out is the fact that we are prepared with real-world cases,” Villa said. “In our classes, we take a practical approach to understanding how financial concepts are dealt with in real life through a variety of case studies and projects. Therefore, we are not only limited to the theoretical components of finance, but we learn how to effectively apply them in practical situations.

“A fun fact is that the judges actually asked us if we had any practical experience in the industry as, according to them, they were impressed with the level of our analysis. Even though the answer was no, the MSF program enabled us to apply our academic knowledge of finance to the real-world scenario prompted in the case.”

Members of all three winning teams from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business.

Kelley professor and former IU vice president honored by two leading IT organizations

Posted on January 27, 2025 by George Vlahakis

While serving as IU chief information officer, Wheeler continued to teach graduate and international executive education students at Kelley.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Brad Wheeler, a Kelley School of Business professor since 1996, who also played key administrative roles at Indiana University for nearly two decades, recently was honored with two awards for the practical impacts of his work.

In December, Wheeler, IU Rudy Professor and Sungkyunkwan Professor of Information Systems, received the AIS Impact Award at the International Conference on Information Systems, the premier conference in field. In October, Wheeler also received the Practical Impacts Award in 2024 from INFORMS, the world’s largest association for professionals and students in operations research, AI, analytics and data science.

The Association for Information Systems recognizes information systems research with widespread impact on practice in business and society. Key criteria are “breadth of use in practice as well as relevance to information systems research. The assessment of the quality of the work is considered secondary to the degree to which it has been widely adopted.” He was the only person recognized in the Economic Impact category.

“Brad’s sterling career in information systems at Indiana University is characterized by a remarkable mastery of both technical detail and its broader implications. Few researchers are as innovative and as good at seeing the big picture,” said Ash Soni, dean of the Kelley School and The Sungkyunkwan Professor. “We at Kelley could not be prouder to call him a colleague, and we feel enormous gratitude for his past and ongoing contributions to both our school and to society at large.”

Brad Wheeler

For 19 years, Wheeler served on IU’s IT leadership team, including 13 years as vice president for IT and chief information officer, with responsibilities for nearly $200 million in IT services and grants. He was concurrently IU vice president for communications and marketing from 2018-2020 and served as interim dean for the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering in 2015-2016.

Prior to being named IU vice president for information technology in 2007, Wheeler was a member of IU’s information technology leadership team for five years, including as associate dean of teaching and learning IT, associate vice president for research and academic computing, associate vice president for community source initiatives, dean of information technology for IU Bloomington, and acting CIO.

Wheeler co-founded and led open-source software and service collaborations such as the Sakai Project, Kuali, and the HathiTrust digital library. He developed IU’s eTexts initiative and implemented a cutting-edge delivery model to tackle the high costs of textbooks for students. He co-founded the Unizin Ltd., a consortium of universities seeking to exert greater control and influence over digital learning landscape. He was the founding chairman for the Kuali Foundation and served on the board of EDUCAUSE from 2009 to 2012.

“I was very fortunate as an assistant professor to be in the right place at the right time in the mid- to late-1990s as the commercial internet-initiated waves of change in commerce and organizations,” Wheeler said. “I worked with executive groups including boards of directors for Global Fortune 200 companies regarding how to innovate within their organizations, in their supply chains, and via customer engagement.

“I saw firsthand how organizations needed a framework for the recurring, unfamiliar and accelerating IU change that could shape strategy and not just align with it,” he added.

At the same time, Wheeler continued to teach graduate and international executive education students at Kelley and served on both corporate and non-profit boards.

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