Dipankar Chakravarti, professor of marketing and the founding director of the Ph.D. concentration in executive business research in the Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Tech, has been named the Robert H. Digges Professor in Entrepreneurial Studies by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.

The Robert H. Digges Professorship in Entrepreneurial Studies was established in 2015 with a generous gift from Robert H. Digges Jr. ’59. He established the endowment to enable the Pamplin College of Business to attract and retain top scholars in the field of entrepreneurial studies.

A member of the Virginia Tech community since 2015 and based in the greater Washington, D.C., metro area, Chakravarti is a distinguished scholar in marketing whose scholarship focuses primarily on the cognitive processes underlying consumer and managerial decision-making. He has been invited to present his work at universities throughout the United States, Europe, India, and China, and he has written more than 50 published papers, books, and book chapters.  

His 1991 paper in the Journal of Consumer Research, widely recognized as one of the top three journals in marketing, received that journal’s best paper award for papers published between 1991 and 1993. He is a Fellow of the Society for Consumer Psychology and has served as editor of the Journal of Consumer Psychology.

An award-winning teacher as well, Chakravarti has served on the program or dissertation committees of more than 50 doctoral students as well as 10 master’s degree thesis committees. Several of his doctoral students hold endowed professorships at major U.S. universities.

Prior to his arrival at Virginia Tech, Chakravarti served as a member of the marketing faculty at the University of Florida; as professor, marketing department head, and the Thomas Faculty Fellow at the University of Arizona; as the Ortloff Professor of Business at the University of Colorado-Boulder; and as professor and vice-dean at the Carey Business School at Johns Hopkins University.

Chakravarti received his bachelor’s degree with honors in physics from Presidency College, University of Calcutta, and a master’s and a Ph.D. in industrial administration from Carnegie-Mellon University.

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