ETH medals for outstanding doctoral theses

Dr Burcu Küçükkeles received the award for her doctoral thesis entitled “Practicing repurposing in the pharmaceutical industry: Uncovering new uses for potential resources”, which was supervised by Professor Georg von Krogh and Dr Shiko Ben-Menahem of the Chair of Strategic Management and Innovation. In her thesis, Dr Küçükkeles focuses on a set of practices and challenges in the pharmaceutical innovation process and discusses the implications for management theory and practice. Dr Küçükkeles currently holds the position of Assistant Professor of Strategy at the University of Amsterdam. Download abstract

In his doctoral thesis, Dr Gabriel Loumeau examines how the public sector shapes today’s economic geography. Specifically, his thesis focuses on understanding how to design spatial policies to ensure efficiency, while preserving fair and equitable access for all. He wrote his thesis entitled “Essays on the Economic Geography of the Public Sector” under the supervision of Professor Marko Köthenbürger of the Chair of Public Economics. Dr Loumeau is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Chair of Public Economics at D-MTEC. Download abstract

Dr Hélène Schernberg received the ETH Medal for her doctoral thesis entitled “Essays on Risk and Time – With Applications in Insurance and Finance”, which was supervised by Professor Antoine Bommier of the Chair of Integrative Risk Management and Economics. In her thesis, Dr Schernberg examines flexible but tractable models of human decision-making whose predictions agree with empirical and experimental evidence. She applies these models to concrete economic problems and shows that they provide far more accurate predictions than models from traditional microeconomics. Dr Schernberg is currently Executive Director of the ETH Risk Center. Download abstract