Professor Valery Yakubovich oversees all the Mack Institute’s programs and day-to-day operations. He focuses on bolstering synergy between the research, teaching, and practice of innovation management within the School; fostering dialogue between corporations and academics; and connecting with our corporate and regional partners’ innovation ecosystems.

Previously, he served as the founding executive director of Penn’s Computational Social Science Lab, where he oversaw the development of an innovative IT, data, and institutional infrastructure for large-scale open collaborative social sciences. He has diverse academic experience ranging from leading a national summer work program for university students in the former Soviet Union to conducting research, teaching, consulting, and fundraising at major academic and corporate institutions in the U.S. and Europe. Professor Yakubovich was on the management faculty of the Wharton School for several years, as well as the ESSEC Business School, where he was a full Professor of Management.

Professor Yakubovich holds an MS in mathematics from Moscow State University, an MA in sociology from the University of Warwick, and a PhD in sociology from Stanford University. His research on organizational innovations and social networks has appeared in top academic and practitioner journals, including American Sociological Review, Human Relations, Organization Science, Harvard Business Review, and California Management Review, and been featured in mass media, including the Financial Times and the New York Times.