PhD Department Staff

As the administrative center for the PhD in business administration, the program office offers various services for prospective and current students, faculty, and staff. We provide information on recruiting, applications and admissions, student funds, student progress monitoring, public relations, program promotions, policies, and procedures.

PhD Department Staff

Michelle Duffy

Michelle Duffy

Program Director and Director of Graduate Studies - Carlson School of Management

Michelle K. Duffy serves as the Director of Graduate Studies and PhD program at the Carlson School of Management. Professor Duffy has researched and published in the areas of leader behavior, employee well-being, emotion, and workplace deviance, including abusive supervision and social undermining. Her work has been published in journals such as the Journal of Applied Psychology, Academy of Management Journal,  Journal of Management,  Organizational Behavior, and Human Decision Processes, and Personnel Psychology. 

Amy Brown

Associate Director - Carlson School of Management

Connect with Amy.

Alex Hoppe

Program Assistant - Carlson School of Management

Connect with Alex.

Meet our PhD Coordinators

Meet our PhD Coordinators

Haiwen (Helen) Zhang
Carl L. Nelson Professor of Accounting, PhD Program Coordinator

Professor Zhang received her PhD of Accounting from Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota in 2007. Before joining Carlson as a tenured Associate Professor of Accounting in July 2018, she was a faculty member at Fisher College of Business, the Ohio State University.

Juliana Salomao
Assistant Professor
Shawn Curley
Professor

Shawn Curley is a professor in the Information and Decision Sciences Department. He joined the Carlson School in September 1986 after completing an MA in mathematics and a PhD in psychology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His research interests are in individual decision-making -- how decisions are made and how they can be aided.

Akshay Rao
Professor, General Mills Chair in Marketing

Akshay R. Rao holds the General Mills Chair in Marketing at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota.  He has an undergraduate honors degree in Economics from Madras University (India), a Masters in Business Administration from XLRI (India), and a PhD in Marketing from Virginia Tech. In 2011, he was honored as a “Distinguished Alumnus” by XLRI (India).

Karthik Natarajan
Associate Professor

Karthik Natarajan is an associate professor of Supply Chain and Operations at the Carlson School of Management and a Fellow of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota. He received his Ph. D.

Aseem Kaul
Professor, The Mosaic Company - Jim Prokopanko Professor for Corporate Responsibility

Aseem joined the Carlson School in 2009, having completed his PhD in Management from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Aseem's research focuses on the relationship between firm scope and capabilities, examining how new capabilities and technologies are best governed and organized, and how the organizational boundary choices firms make impact their subsequent innovation.

Connie Wanberg
Professor and Industrial Relations Faculty Excellence Chair