Advising
I advise PhD students in Stanford MS&E whose work intersects entrepreneurship, institutional design, industrial policy, AI's effects on innovation, or the global political economy of technology. The list below covers students and postdocs I've worked with directly. For prospective students considering applying, see the MS&E PhD page.
The doctoral and postdoctoral pipeline above is deliberately broad on dimensions that matter for MS&E and for engineering education more generally. Women have been the majority of advisees through several recent cohorts — Wajeeha Ahmad (incoming Columbia Business School), Zahra Hejrati (AMENA Center), Khonika Gope (University of Oregon Lundquist), Iris Wang (Yale SOM doctoral student), Tess Lallemant (incoming postdoc, King Center sponsored) — and the international pipeline reaches NUS, CUHK Business School, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Oxford Saïd, CMU Tepper, and Johns Hopkins Carey.
The undergraduate research pipeline is built around Stanford SURF (Undergraduate Research Fellows) and UGVR (Undergraduate Visiting Research at Stanford) programs, and is explicitly oriented toward students who would otherwise have fewer paths into a research career — including first-generation and low-income (FLI) students, international undergraduates from outside the U.S. R1 pipeline, and Stanford undergraduates whose interests sit at the engineering / social-science boundary that MS&E was built to occupy. Several former SURF and UGVR alumni have since gone on to PhD programs at Carnegie Mellon, Stanford itself, and elsewhere.
This pipeline work has a structural home in MS&E. Since 2020 I have served as Chair of the department's Pathways to Research and Opportunity (PRO) Committee. The committee's mandate is to broaden the path into engineering for first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented students — into research experiences, into engineering graduate school, and into STEM careers. Six continuous years of chairing this work is how my own lab's pipeline (above) connects to the wider Stanford MS&E pipeline I am responsible for as a faculty member.
The most useful first email is one that includes your CV, your transcript, and a short paragraph on why you think I'd be a good match for what you want to work on. The third part matters more than people assume — it's the part that lets me tell whether your interests actually overlap with what I work on.
Career interests that intersect the areas I work in — entrepreneurship, institutional design, industrial policy, the political economy of technology, or AI's effects on innovation and platforms. Most of my advisees are headed toward founding companies, working at startups, joining technology or AI-focused roles in industry, or going on to research; some combination of those tends to be the through-line. Students primarily oriented toward finance or consulting careers are usually better matched with other MS&E faculty whose advising practice is closer to those paths; I'm happy to point you to colleagues if that's the better fit.
Evidence of strong academic performance on the transcript. I also take seriously that students from first-generation and low-income (FLI) backgrounds often navigate headwinds that the transcript alone doesn't capture — context and trajectory matter, not just the GPA in isolation.
Stay as technical as you can for as long as you can. Take more of the technical coursework in engineering and in MS&E core before broadening into entrepreneurship and leadership courses. The entrepreneurship and management material is more useful — and more honest — on top of a real technical base than as a substitute for one.
I get this question often. The most accurate, current answer always lives on the MS&E department pages rather than with me: see the MS&E graduate program and the coterm program pages for what the program is looking for, application materials, and deadlines. I'm happy to talk through fit once you've read those.
I only write recommendation letters for students I've worked with outside the classroom — on research, an independent study, an advising relationship, or a substantive project. Coursework alone, even excellent coursework, doesn't give me enough specific evidence to write a letter that would actually help you.
Placements include Columbia Business School, Oxford Saïd, Carnegie Mellon Tepper, Johns Hopkins Carey, National University of Singapore, CUHK Business School, the University of Oregon Lundquist, the University of San Diego, and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile — alongside leadership roles in industry research and policy at organizations including the AMENA Center for Entrepreneurship and Development and Project Eleven.
Current PhD students
- September 2024 – present · Anticipated 2029
Semiconductors, Export Controls and Technology Entrepreneurship (preliminary)
UGVR alum (Stanford visiting researcher) before joining the PhD program
- September 2024 – present · Anticipated 2029
Randomized Field Experiments and Entrepreneurship (preliminary)
Incoming postdoctoral researchers
- Postdoctoral researcher (King Center sponsored) · Starting Fall 2026
PhD candidate at Cornell Dyson School of Applied Economics & Management; previously Research Analyst at IFPRI and the World Bank. Research focuses on development economics, labor economics, and economics of education.
Former postdoctoral researchers
- Postdoctoral researcher · February 2020 – July 2025
Co-author on Learning-by-Advising (working paper); led field operations for the Thailand AIS/KBank accelerator RCT.
Former PhD students
- Wajeeha Ahmad · co-advised with Erik BrynjolfssonSeptember 2020 – 2026 · Graduated 2026
Delegating to AI: Essays on Managing Misalignment in Markets, Platforms and Organizations
Committee: Erik Brynjolfsson (co-advisor), Chuck Eesley (co-advisor), Eric Horvitz, Ramesh Johari, Diyi Yang (chair)
Now: Incoming Assistant Professor, Columbia Business School (Management Division).
- Zahra Hejrati · co-advised with Kathleen EisenhardtSeptember 2018 – August 2025 · Graduated 2025
The Impact of Digital Technologies on Entrepreneurial Venture Formation
Now: Research Fellow, The AMENA Center for Entrepreneurship and Development in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa (2025 – present)
- September 2015 – June 2023 · Graduated 2023
The Development of Entrepreneurial Skills and Motivation: The Role of Institutions
Now: Assistant Professor of Management, University of Oregon Lundquist College of Business
- September 2017 – September 2022 · Graduated 2022
Managing External and Internal Change: Lessons from Entrepreneurship
Now: Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship, Carnegie Mellon University Tepper School of Business
- September 2014 – June 2021 · Graduated 2021
Entrepreneurial Finance: From Accelerators to IPOs
Now: Product Lead at Project Eleven (previously Senior Associate, Floodgate)
- September 2015 – June 2021 · Graduated 2021
Entrepreneurial Strategies in Institutional Changes: Tackling the Conflicts Between New and Old Rules
UGVR alum (Stanford visiting researcher) before joining the PhD program
Now: Assistant Professor, Department of Management, CUHK Business School
- September 2012 – June 2018 · Graduated 2018
Online Sellers' Offline Environment: Implications for Platform Strategy
Now: Assistant Professor of Management & Organization, Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School (previously INSEAD)
- September 2010 – September 2017 · Graduated 2017
Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies: Institutions and Relationships
Now: Assistant Professor, National University of Singapore Business School (previously INSEAD)
- Daniel Armanios · co-advised with Kathleen EisenhardtSeptember 2009 – June 2015 · Graduated 2015
What is the Role of the State in Entrepreneurship and Venture Performance?
Now: BT Professor of Management and Chair of Major Programme Management, University of Oxford Saïd Business School; Professorial Fellow, St Anne's College, Oxford
- September 2010 – May 2015 · Graduated 2015
Discovering Entrepreneurial Opportunities
Now: Associate Professor, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile; Academic Director, EPIC Lab
- Robert Eberhart · co-advised with Kathleen EisenhardtSeptember 2010 – June 2013 · Graduated 2013
Institutional Change and Entrepreneurship
Now: Associate Professor of Management and Faculty Director, Ahlers Center of International Business, University of San Diego
Current research assistants
- Austin Chen
Former research assistants
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Ph.D. Candidate in Organizational Behavior & Theory, Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business.
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Stanford MS&E MS '21 (Health Systems Modeling & Health Policy concentration); joined via the MS&E PRO committee. Active in MS&E's Diversity, Equity & Inclusion committee during her time at Stanford.
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Founder and CEO of Block Party (acquired by DeleteMe); previously early engineer at Quora and Pinterest. Named one of TIME's 12 Women of the Year in 2022.
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Stanford '25 (Economics, Anthropology, Symbolic Systems); Pear Fellow.
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Co-founder at Leegle; previously McKinsey, CDTM, UC Berkeley, Stanford.
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Stanford MS&E MS '21 (Technology & Engineering Management concentration); joined via the MS&E PRO committee.
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Stanford BS '21, MS '22; King Center Academic Year Research Fellow on the Silicon Valley accelerator cohort composition study. Now at General Catalyst.
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Stanford and Peking University alumna; previously Program Director at Outliers Fund.
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Assistant Professor of Finance and Business Economics, USC Marshall School of Business. Research in financial intermediation, asset pricing, and macroeconomics.
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Incoming Assistant Professor of Finance, Warwick Business School.
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Tsinghua University BA / MA / PhD in Sociology; visiting scholar at Stanford MS&E via the UGVR program. Now Associate Professor at the National Institute of Social Development, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), and editor for the Journal of Social Development (《社会发展研究》). CASS Young Talent. Research on grassroots governance, volunteering, and the third distribution.
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Stanford '25, MA '25 (political science + sociology); first Kachin-Burmese American Stanford graduate. King Center Research Fellow on the Uganda refugee entrepreneurship program — helped facilitate the program and expand enrollment to include refugees in camps and settlements across Uganda.
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Stanford '24, MA '24 (sociology); King Center Research Fellow on the Uganda refugee entrepreneurship program. Now at The Nature Conservancy.
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Stanford Undergraduate Research Fellow (SURF program).
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Stanford MS&E BS, MS '22; joined via the MS&E PRO committee. Years later, co-organized and co-taught the Foundation's December 2024 Vietnam programming with Fulbright University Vietnam, UEH, and the HKU/AWS workshop in Ho Chi Minh City. Now at Rippling.
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Co-Founder and CEO of Stackmatix; mentor across Plug and Play, Berkeley SkyDeck, StartX, Techstars, and Alchemist Accelerator.
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Research assistant while Chuck was a doctoral student at MIT. Later: MBA from Wharton, JD from University of San Francisco; attorney at Perkins Coie; inventor with multiple patents.
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Stanford University; EY-Parthenon.
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Stanford '22 (Economics, Human Rights minor); King Center Undergraduate Research Fellow on the Thailand accelerator entrepreneurship project. Now at the Public Equity Group in New York.
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Stanford Undergraduate Research Fellow (SURF program). Now a Mechanical Engineering PhD candidate at Carnegie Mellon University (modeling optimal design, consumer demand, and automotive policy).
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BA Finance, Peking University; Stanford MS in Management. Now a doctoral student in Organizations & Management at Yale School of Management.
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Former research assistant.
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Now at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK).
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Building AI products and embodied intelligence.
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Director, Sub-Chapter Lead, Reagent Bioinformatics at Roche Sequencing (genomics, precision medicine).
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Software Engineer at Google.
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Stanford '24, international relations + FSI Masters in International Policy; King Center Research Fellow on the Uganda refugee entrepreneurship program. Now on the defense investment team at 8VC.
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MIT BS in Mathematics and Management Science; Harvard MBA and MPP. Now Co-leader of Egon Zehnder's Artificial Intelligence practice (Palo Alto); previously Business Development Partner at Google's Gradient Ventures (Google's AI fund) and VP at Celential.ai. Originally a research assistant while Chuck was a doctoral student at MIT.