Jenkins Grad Students Presenting at NC State’s Graduate Research Symposium

Seven students in the NC State Poole College of Management’s Jenkins graduate programs are participating in NC State’s Eighth Annual Graduate Student Research Symposium, to be held Tuesday, March 19, 2013, from 1 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. at NC State’s McKimmon Center. This event is open to the public; students, faculty and staff are encouraged to attend and see the work being done by NC State’s graduate students. View the complete catalog of graduate student entries from across NC State, along with abstracts of their poster presentations.

Following are the entries from Poole College’s Jenkins graduate students.

MBA students

Leigh Johnson, second-year full time MBA student in the marketing concentration, has submitted a poster (No. 19) along with fellow master’s students Mike Brown, industrial engineering, and James Dieffenderfer, biomedical engineering. Their poster topic, “Innovation in the Peak Flow Meter Market through Business Analysis, Product Development and Engineering Advancements,” summarizes their conception of a fully functional, market-ready device that offers a reliable monitoring solution that helps consumers with asthma monitor their breathing, including delivery of information about the best ways to manage and treat changes in breathing via a smart phone. It was developed as part of their work in the Innovation Management course taught jointly by Dr. John McCreery in Poole College; with project advisors Dr. Haig Khachatoorian, professor of graphic and industrial design and director of industrial design graduate programs, and John Muth, professor, electrical and computer engineering.

Matt Kelly, Christine Reaves, and Evgueni Kountikov, all in the Jenkins MBA program, submitted a poster (No. 80) entitled, “Pharmacoeconomic Analysis of Solithromycin.” It summarizes their work on a project sponsored by Cempra, Inc., which is developing a novel antibiotic, a first-in-class fluoroketolide called Solithromycin, for treatment of Community-Acquired Bacterial Pneumonia (CABP). Their advisor is Dr. Richard Kouri, director of the Biosciences Management Initiative in Poole College. Kelly and Reaves are part-time students at the Research Triangle Park campus, in the bioscience management and technology entrepreneurship commercialization concentrations. Kountikov is also part-time RTP student, in the bioscience management concentration.

Economics Graduate Programs

Shu Li, Ph.D. candidate, Graduate Economics program, submitted a poster (No. 90) on “Transport on the Mississippi River and Spatial Corn Basis,” summarizing a paper in which he analyzes the effects of waterway transportation costs on the spatial distribution of corn prices at U.S. grain markets. His advisor is Dr. Walter Thurman, professor of agriculture and resource economics, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Zhen Wang, Graduate Economics program, submitted a poster (number 191) on Welfare Impact of Truncated Tournament Contracts: A Short-run Analysis in Broiler Production Industry, in which he evaluates the short-run welfare impacts of switching from a standard piece-rate tournament compensation scheme to truncated tournament policy from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. His advisor is Tomislav Vukina, professor of agriculture and resource economics, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.