The Eugene Lang Entrepreneurship Center at Columbia Business School is pleased to offer annual fellowship awards to PhD students whose research relates to entrepreneurship, innovation or venture investing in their dissertations. Each academic year, the program awards up to four students with a fellowship of $5,000.
Application Requirements
- A cover letter that summarizes your research interests and why you think it is relevant to entrepreneurship.
- Your CV.
- Copies of any paper you have written that relate to entrepreneurship. For projects that are still not complete, please provide a tentative abstract and a proposed timeline.
- The Faculty Sponsor sheet, signed by your faculty sponsor.
Timeline
- Winners' research will either appear as an article for the Lang Center’s Forbes column or other approved showcase platform in the spring of 2025
- Applications are closed for this year's selection cycle. Please check back in fall 2024.
Eligibility
- Awards will be given as additional stipend. There are no restrictions on how the funds might be used.
- Half of the amount of the awards will be distributed upon the announcement of the winners, the other half after the presentation of research findings, which will either appear as an article for the Lang Center’s Forbes column or other approved showcase platform in the spring of 2025
- Only students in their second, third, or fourth-year PhD students may apply. Priority will be given to students from Columbia Business School.
- Applicants must have a tenure-track faculty sponsor for their proposal.
- Recipients will be selected based on the quality of their research and its relevance to entrepreneurship.
If you have any questions, please contact Gabriel Mejia, Senior Associate Director of the Lang Center ([email protected]).
2023 Fellowship Recipients
Inara Tareque PhD '26
- Driven by my core belief in entrepreneurship as a vehicle for economic mobility and social equity, my research examines systemic, social, and personal factors that shape inclusive entrepreneurship. To this end, I employ a blend of computational techniques and field experiments to reveal underlying conditions and processes that explain entrepreneurial outcomes, strategy, and behavior.
Yixi Chen PhD '26
- My research examines the intersection of entrepreneurial narrative and identity. I focus on how entrepreneurs with stigmatized and marginalized identities strategically present their identities within their venture narratives, and how different strategies affect audience perceptions. I use a combination of computational, qualitative, and experimental methods in my studies.
Yuqi Zhang '25
- My research interests are in corporate finance and innovation, specifically in the context of the transition to a low-carbon and resource-efficient economy. I study the drivers of climate innovation, such as the impact of regulatory incentives on corporate R&D in clean energy.
2022 Fellowship Recipients
Brandon Freiberg PhD '24
- I'm fascinated by the dynamic environments and rapid changes that early stage startups go through. My work investigates how organizational properties including a founder's personality traits, a company's organizational structure, and the composition of its investors, influence its success. I often employ computational methods and natural language processing to do so.
Jeremias Huber PhD '24
- My research interests center around Asset Pricing, Venture Capital and Information Frictions; in particular, I am working towards importing tools from the asset pricing literature to speak to notions of risk and return within the Venture Capital asset class.
Li Yang PhD '24
- I am interested in studying the interaction between information communication, dissemination, and innovation activities. My research projects examine this relation both within a firm setting and on an aggregate economy level, using both analytical models and data analysis.
Carl Blaine PhD '25
- My research focuses on topics of authenticity and creativity at both the individual and organizational level. I am interested in questions about how we create ourselves and things in the world around us. For instance, when and how do entrepreneurs craft pitches to express their own unique identities?
2021 Fellowship Recipients
James Carter PhD '22
- James explores how Black entrepreneurs navigate their entrepreneurial and racial identity. Specifically, he conducted a natural language processing study of a sample of 525 podcast interviews with Black entrepreneurs and complement this with follow-on private interviews with 30 of those same entrepreneurs.
Junjun Quan PhD '23
- Junjun’s research interests are corporate finance, macroeconomics, and innovation, with a focus on data privacy and technology policy. Junjun studies how data privacy regulations affect business practices, innovation activities, and market competition.
Vrinda Mittal PhD '22
- Vrinda studies the effects of private equity (PE) buyouts on labor productivity using a novel micro-data on investments in PE funds and PE buyout deals, combined with confidential Census data.
Yiran Kang
- Yiran investigates how U.S. private firms communicate with equity investors around private capital raising. Using multiple research methods, including survey, interview, and archival analysis, she provides evidence on private firms’ public and private disclosure practices.
2020 Fellowship Recipients
Zaijia Liu PhD '20
- I am interested in studying how the variability of entrepreneurs’ emotional expressions influences the impressions they leave among their followers.
Seyed Mansouri PhD '21
- My research interests lie at the juncture of technology, entrepreneurship, finance, and economic growth. I study how the cost of financing impacts entrepreneurial activity and technology of firms, which are key drivers of economic growth.
Soo Min Cho PhD '21
- My research interests lie in understanding the dynamics of organizational culture in entrepreneurial ventures by leveraging machine learning techniques.
2019 Fellowship Recipients
Jean Oh PhD '22
- I am interested studying in the motivations of entrepreneurs and particularly the role of pro-social considerations in determining the rate and direction of innovation. My research draws on a variety of methodologies with a focus on randomized control trials.
Yegor Tkachenko PhD '21
- My research centers on designing robust, scalable intelligent systems for marketing automation and on legal and ethical issues of AI use in business settings. Methodologically, my work spans decision theory, optimization, reinforcement learning, and deep learning.
Lu Zhang PhD '22
- The research is about analyzing the importance of speaking styles in persuasion in an entrepreneurial setting. One particular focus is to see if there exists some gender differences. The methods used are machine learning models leveraging NLP tools and some tools for audio data.
2018 Fellowship Recipient
Ye Zhang PhD '20
- My research work mainly focuses on entrepreneurial finance and the impact of firms' innovations. Besides traditional entrepreneurial financial instruments (VC, Angel, etc.), I am also interested in new entrepreneurial financial alternatives like micro-finance or crowdfunding.
2017 Fellowship Recipients
Zachary Brown PhD '20
- I am interested in studying how founders present themselves to others in order to effectively recruit employees, entice customers, and obtain funding — advised by Professor Adam Galinsky.
Natalie A. Carlson PhD '19
- I am researching entrepreneurship and SME strategy in developing and emerging economies, as well as social entrepreneurship and the ways in which enterprises balance competing social and commercial objectives — advised by Professor Bruce Kogut.
Kylie Jiwon Hwang PhD '20
- I am interested in answering the question of who becomes an entrepreneur based on individual or social characteristics, and how these features influence entrepreneurial outcomes — advised by Professor Damon Phillips.
2016 Fellowship Recipients
Xiao Cen PhD '20
- My research work is at the juncture of entrepreneurship, household finance, and financial technology.
Dana Kanze PhD '19
- My research interests lie in applying behavioral insights to understand variations in funding and growth outcomes for early stage ventures.
Alessandro Piazza PhD '18
- In my dissertation, I explore an important yet under-investigated topic: the transition from entrepreneurship to angel investing.