Accelerated Management Program

Olav Sorenson joined the UCLA Anderson faculty in 2020. His primary stream of research pertains to economic geography, focusing on how entrepreneurship influences the growth and competitiveness of regions within countries, and on why some regions appear more supportive to entrepreneurs than others.  

From 1999 to 2005, Sorenson taught strategy courses at UCLA Anderson. Prior to returning to Anderson, he held the Frederick Frank ’54 and Mary C. Tanner Professorship at the Yale School of Management and, before that, the Jeffrey S. Skoll Chair in Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Toronto. He has also served on the faculties of London Business School and the University of Chicago and has held visiting appointments at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, SDA Bocconi, Universidad Carlos III, Melbourne Business School, Singapore Management University, the National University of Singapore, BI Norwegian Business School, the Stanford Graduate School of Business and INSEAD. 

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Dean Anjani Jain's research interests include the analysis and design of manufacturing systems, optimization algorithms, and probabilistic analysis of combinatorial problems. He has published in the professional literature on telecommunications network design and his more recent work has investigated the impact of growing product variety on the manufacture and design of families of products, especially in the automobile industry.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in physics and mathematics from Indore University in India, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and a PhD in operations research from the University of California, Los Angeles. He joined the faculty of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1986 and served for 26 years before joining the Yale School of Management.

At Wharton, he taught courses in operations management and management science at the MBA, PhD, and undergraduate levels. In 1993 he became director of Wharton’s MBA Program and was instrumental in several curricular initiatives. From 2000 to 2010 he served as vice dean and director of Wharton’s Graduate Division and from 2010 to 2012 as vice dean of Wharton’s MBA Program for Executives. 

Dean Jain has won numerous teaching awards and has taught courses at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, and the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad and Mohali. He has served on the International Advisory Council of the ISB and as its co-area leader in operations management. 

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Professor King’s research examines social networks, social influence, and team dynamics. Her most recent line of work analyzes the role social networks played in the prescription drug abuse epidemic. She is also interested in how to effectively leverage networks to treat opioid use disorders and address the loneliness epidemic. Professor King is the author of Social Chemistry: Decoding the Elements of Human Connection. Her research and book have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, National Public Radio, among other outlets.

Professor Thomas focuses on the relation between accounting information and stock prices. Insights recently developed in this area that suggest fundamental links between accounting numbers and value form the basis of much of his recent teaching and research. He was actively involved in developing the core curriculum and has written cases and other teaching material for the courses he teaches on equity valuation and financial management. Differences between stock prices and fundamental value provide the basis for his examination of various stock trading strategies. Before joining the faculty at the Yale School of Management, he was the Ernst & Young Professor of Accounting and Finance at Columbia Business School. 

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