In Case You Missed It - Fall 2025
September 15, 2025
2025 September Edition
Dr. Shang Wang and Dr. Meng Zhu served as expert panelists at the 2025 American Marketing Association (AMA) Conference (August 22–24). They contributed to two invited workshops—New Data: Opportunities and Challenges and Interdisciplinary Research: Marketing Meets Medicine, Public Health, and Law—and their participation underscores Pamplin’s role in advancing conversations at the nexus of marketing, data, and society.
Dr. Jian Ni (Marketing) and Dr. Chris Zobel (BIT), as faculty co-hosts, together with postdoctoral associate Dr. Lecheng Zheng (Ph.D. in Computer Science, UIUC), were jointly awarded the Virginia Tech Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship. This competitive award, among the first in Pamplin, supports early-career scholars and interdisciplinary research.
Dr. Dipankar Chakravarti was recognized as a Global Marketing and Retailing Fellow at the GRBM Conference hosted by SMU’s Cox School of Business (June 2025). His invited talk on consumer vulnerability in the digital economy was based on joint work with Dr. Angela Yi (Cal State–San Marcos, VT Ph.D.) and Dr. Prashant Mishra (IIM Calcutta).
Dr. Broderick Turner and Dr. Shane Wang hosted the 3rd Annual Unconference on June 17–18, 2025 at Academic Building One, Virginia Tech Innovation Campus in Alexandria, Virginia. The event brought together more than 50 global scholars for lightning talks, collaborative sessions, and a multi-method research seminar.
Dr. Shreyans Goenka was named Outstanding Reviewer by the Journal of Marketing Research (2025), and Dr. Joe Sergy’s article in Applied Research in Quality of Life (2024) received the Best Paper Award from ISQOLS. Dr. Goenka is also organizing a workshop on Philosophy and Marketing this October, while Dr. Wang is co-editing a POM special issue on Generative AI.
Professor Donna Wertalik and Marketing Advisory Board member Christina Daves were featured on WDBJ (September 5, 2025)—on Here @Home discussing deepfakes and on Living Ageless sharing fashion tips after 50, respectively. Voices of Privacy is launching Season 2 this fall, and Professor Wertalik was also interviewed by CBS Austin on city branding and polling on the new logo.
Professor Steve Matuszak secured five new VEDP/VITAL clients—Chocolate Paper, Pangea Chat, My SpectrumCC, Rising Tide, and Visual Workforce—with accompanying VEDP funding. These projects will receive cross-course, collaborative strategic marketing support from students, offering experiential learning and regional business impact.