Dear Friends and Colleagues: 

We've quickly arrived at the halfway point in the semester when students are focusing on closing out the year and preparing for the winter break. The past few months has already brought us 7 fireside chats, 2 conferences, and a plethora of other convenings. The month of November promises to continue this momentum, and we've shared a list below of all the exciting things coming your way. You can also review a full list of our events and upcoming activities at https://ibms.bu.edu/events/. Additionally, if you'd like to see any of the events after they've happened, you can review our playlists and recordings here.

We'd like to express our deepest gratitude to the judges and mentors who volunteered for the upcoming Discourse Competition, and we are excited to share the results of the competition with all of you at the beginning of December!

Thank you for your continuing support, engagement, and partnership.

Kris May, Executive Director

Upcoming Events

Fireside Chat with Dr. Peter Kolchinsky


Join us on Tuesday, November 10th at 5pm at the Questrom School of Business (4th floor) for a fireside chat with Peter Kolchinsky. Peter is the founder and Managing Partner of RA Capital Management, one of the most influential investment firms in biotechnology and the life sciences, with more than $14 billion in assets under management. He earned his PhD in virology from Harvard, and he has spent his career backing the companies that turn cutting-edge science into medicines that actually reach patients. He is also the author of The Great American Drug Deal and the founder of No Patient Left Behind, where he champions what he calls the biotech social contract, the idea that society should reward innovation while ensuring medicines become affordable once their patents expire. - Register Here

Fireside Chat with Dr. Hugh Herr

Join us on Thursday, November 12th at 11am in the 4th floor of the Questrom School of Business for a fireside chat with Dr. Hugh Herr. Dr. Herr is one of the most remarkable scientists and inventors alive. A professor at the MIT Media Lab, where he heads the Biomechatronics group and co-directs the K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics, he effectively founded the modern field of bionics. A champion rock climber as a teenager, he lost both legs below the knee after a mountaineering accident at seventeen, then set out to engineer the very limbs that would let him climb and walk again. Today his lab builds technologies that merge body and machine, powered prosthetic limbs, exoskeletons, and the neural interfaces that let a person’s mind control a bionic limb directly. His breakthroughs include the world’s first powered bionic ankle, a device that actively propels the body and has restored natural movement to thousands of people, and TIME has named him a leader of the bionic age. - Register Here

Fireside Chat with Dr. Robert Playter

Join us on Monday, November 16th at 4:30pm on the 9th floor ballroom at 1 Silber Way for a fireside chat with Dr. Robert Playter. Dr. Playter is the former CEO of Boston Dynamics, the company behind the most advanced robots the world has ever seen. A former gymnast with a PhD from MIT, he began in Marc Raibert’s legendary Leg Lab, where he engineered robots that could flip and somersault through the air. He joined Boston Dynamics in its earliest days in 1994, rose to lead its engineering, and became CEO in 2019, guiding the company from a pure research lab into a commercial powerhouse. Under his leadership, machines like the agile Spot and the humanoid Atlas went from viral demonstrations to real products reshaping industry. - Register Here

Fireside Chat with Frank Sellman

Join us on Tuesday, November 17th at 5:00pm on the 4th floor of the Questrom School of Business for a fireside chat with Frank Sellman. Frank is a Managing Director at Moelis & Company, one of the world’s leading independent investment banks. Over a career spanning more than three decades, including a prior role as a Managing Director at Bear Stearns, he has become a trusted advisor to corporate leaders, boards, and financial sponsors, guiding them through complex M&A, leveraged buyouts, restructurings, and capital markets transactions. Today he leads Moelis’s coverage of the building products and industrial distribution sectors, advising the companies and investors that shape the backbone of the real economy. - Register Here

The WBUR Breakfast Club with Noubar Afeyan

Join us on Wednesday, November 18th at 7:30am at WBUR CitySpace for a fireside chat hosted by WBUR with Flagship Pioneering CEO and Moderna Co-Founder Noubar Afeyan. Noubar Afeyan’s career has been guided by asking the question, “What if?” Though simple, it can lead science down a path that reveals insights to our greatest mysteries. It’s the key, along with a firm belief in the scientific method, that Afeyanhas used to unlock innovation and investment among his many groundbreaking endeavors as the founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering and co-founder and board chairman of Moderna. Afeyan will sit down for a conversation exploring his career and the revolutionary power of entrepreneurship and invention. The Mehrotra Institute is proud to be a presenting sponsor of this series and we are excited to convene people together once again for another Breakfast Club event! - Purchase Tickets Here

Alumni Panel
Life After Ownership: Technology, Markets, & Identity

Join us on Tuesday, December 1st, at 5:30pm on the 4th floor of the Questrom School of Business for an engaging alumni panel. Inspired by Prof. Carey Morewedge's forthcoming book, Possessions: How We Think about Our Stuff-and Ourselves, this panel explores how rapid technological change is transforming our relationship to ownership, access, and value. Co-hosted by the BU Questrom Feld Center and the Mehrotra Institute, the conversation brings together leaders from business, academia, and industry to examine the evolving nature of consumption in an era shaped by digital platforms, AI, and the sharing economy-and the broader implications for identity, decision-making, and how we define what it truly means to own something. - Register Here

Boston University's Ravi K. Mehrotra Institute for Business, Markets, & Society was founded thanks to generous donations to the Questrom School of Business at Boston University from the Mehrotra family and others. Our mission is to advance research, education, and public discourse on the role business and markets do, can, and should play in creating value, and solving global societal challenges.

We are grateful to our team and advisory board for their support in aiding our mission. To contribute to our program or learn more about it, please email Kris May at krismay@bu.edu.

Copyright (C) 2026 Boston University. All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in via our website or were in recent contact with us regarding an event.