Research

Publications

• (2021) Social Learning in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Community Establishments’ Closure Decisions Follow Those of Nearby Chain Establishments. Management Science. (with Mathijs de Vaan, Abhishek Nagaraj and Sameer Srivastava). Link

• (2025) Fleming, L. and S. Mumtaz, S. Arts . Evolutionary perspectives on innovation. Sorenson, Olav, and Patricia Thornton (Eds.), De Gruyter Handbook of the Sociology of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. De Gruyter: New York, NY

Working Papers

• Lost in Translation? Science Communication and the Commercial Diffusion of Ideas.  Job Market Paper

  • Abstract: Despite the potential of scientific knowledge to drive firm performance and innovation, many valuable scientific discoveries remain unexploited. I argue that this underutilization of science could be driven by the complexity of scientific communication. I examine the role of scientific translation – communication of complex scientific ideas using accessible, non-technical language – through press releases in helping firms draw on academic science. Using a novel dataset of over 350,000 press releases about scientific papers from the past 25 years and exploiting congestion at university press offices as a source of exogenous variation in press coverage, I find that papers with press releases are over ten times more likely to be cited in firm-owned patents. Rather than increase citations simply through increased attention to focal papers, I find that the impact of press releases is higher for papers that use more specialized language, suggesting an important role for the translation mechanism. The benefits, however, are not uniform across firms; those lacking prior scientific capability gain little from these press releases. Instead, scientific translations complement a firm's existing scientific capabilities and are particularly valuable in helping firms explore insights from scientific sub-fields outside their prior areas of expertise. These findings highlight the importance of accessible scientific communication in bridging the gap between academic research and commercial innovation while also emphasizing the importance of scientific capabilities to effectively leverage translated knowledge in distant domains.

• From Lab to Limelight: Media's Role in Boosting Scientific Impact. (with Abhishek Nagaraj)
  
  

Work in progress

• Encouraging Open Science Practices in Minority Serving Institutions (with Abhishek Nagaraj).