Carnegie Mellon University

Support Research

Instruction at Tepper is research driven. Students are exposed to frontier thinking on a variety of business problems. By working with research projects at Tepper, firms can also benefit from this shortened pipeline from academic research to business applications. 

Based on your initial engagement with us to discuss challenges of common interest, and potentially engaging in supporting student capstones, we can undertake a longer term partnership on a research project arising from the challenge. These projects are best run through a champion in the company whose responsibility is closely linked with the success of the project and can advise the research time about critical modeling choices. 

Research projects are highly valuable for firms that can get informed answers to longer-term strategic questions from rigorous academic analysis rather than a short-term study or engagement. While the funding levels are not insignificant, the returns can be significantly high compared to short-term consulting engagements. These collaborations can serve to retain top talent in firms by providing the opportunity to engage in research with us. Also, our partners have the opportunity to have a deep look at the talent pool at the university that they can hire from. Finally, there are reputational gains on both sides from engaging in research collaboration. Academics for their part highly value the data available for analysis from the firms and the possibility of running field experiments based on their models and recommendations. In this way, a well-structured research project can be a win-win for all parties involved. View a recent example of a project.

The Corporate & Foundation Relations team at Tepper manages relationships between CMU and potential partners. Please contact Jen Cadman with any questions, or if you would like assistance with a proposal.