Sen Chai

Sen Chai is a post-doctoral fellow at Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School anda research scholars at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and recently obtained her doctorate from the Technology and Operations Management (TOM) unit at Harvard Business School. Her research interests are the emergence, diffusion and commercialization of creative breakthroughs. Her current project focuses on understanding where scientific breakthroughs come from and which scientists are more likely to discover them using a hybrid methodology. In the context of innovation policy, she is also studying innovative performance and productivity effects of academic-industry collaboration funding, as well as understanding which managerial and structural factors of these grants make them more successful. 

Prior to Harvard, Sen worked in the San Francisco and Seattle offices of Deloitte Consulting LLP as a consultant helping clients optimize their business processes. She received a B.Eng. in Electrical Engineering from McGill University and a M.S. in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University. She has also passed all three levels of the CFA curriculum.

Sen grew up in Beijing, Paris, New York City and Montreal, and is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and French. She enjoys traveling, sailing, and skiing during her free time.

Download CV: [PDF]

Contact: chais@nber.org