About
Ciro Donald Esposito is a PhD candidate in the Entrepreneurship and Innovation section at the Amsterdam Business School, University of Amsterdam, since September 2019. For his PhD research, Ciro studies early-stage investments in biotech ventures, with a specific focus on the quality signals the entrepreneur and the new venture can send to investors and on the effects of how the entrepreneur or venture are categorized or categorize themselves in terms of industry, technology, goal of the product etc. His research combines insights from management science, especially entrepreneurship and innovation, with those from categorization theory, both in management science and in sociology, and apply a broad range of quantitative techniques, from network analysis to machine learning. He holds a MSc in Economics and Finance and a BSc in Economics from the Department of Economics and Management of the University of Pavia. During his graduate studies, he worked as academic and private tutor, student guidance counselor and assistant of the secretarial office of the Department of Economics and Management of the University of Pavia. He also has professional working experience as an Intern in Public Administration. Ciro can be contacted at C.D.Esposito@uva.nl.
About Ciro’s research project
The project “Increase insight in factors that drive financial investments in organoid bio-medical entrepreneurs” aims to study early-stage investments in biotech ventures, with a specific focus on the quality signals the entrepreneur and the new venture can send to investors and on the effects of how the entrepreneur or venture are categorized or categorize themselves in terms of industry, technology, goal of the product etc. The research combines insights from management science, especially entrepreneurship and innovation, with those from categorization theory, both in management science and in sociology, and apply a broad range of quantitative techniques, from network analysis to machine learning. This project also includes a secondment, which is a ten-month visit to Charles River in Leiden focused on gathering empirical data on the decision-making process of venture capitalists in the selection of new investments, especially concerning organoid technology. The PhD candidate Ciro Donald Esposito works in the Entrepreneurship and Innovation section at the Amsterdam Business School, University of Amsterdam, under the supervision of Prof.dr. Nachoem Wijnberg and Dr. Balazs Szatmari.
About the Amsterdam Business School
ABS is one of Europe’s major comprehensive universities, truly international in research, curriculum, staff and students. It is promoting excellence and leadership in all business areas and has its research fully integrated into the study programs with small-scale interactive seminars, linking theory to practice, taught by renowned academics and practitioners. Th e Amsterdam Business School (ABS) is part of the University of Amsterdam’s Faculty of Economics and Business. ABS Master in Business Administration was #1 ranked in 2016 and the school is internationally recognized triple-crown accredited. It has around 4,000 full-time students and 140 FTE academic staff. One of the school’s core focus areas is the application of Data Science in all areas of business studies: Marketing, Finance, Operations Management, HR, Accounting and Strategy. To stimulate Big Data & Business Analytics, the school actively participates in Amsterdam Data Science, an all department initiative of the University of Amsterdam (UvA), the VU University Amsterdam VU), the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA) and the Center for Mathematics & Computer Science (CWI). Within Amsterdam Data Science, a large number of research projects on Data Science take place, both with a theoretical focus and with an applied / industrial focus.