Industry Affiliates

The Master of Behavioral and Decision Sciences (MBDS) program's top priority is to identify industry partners eager to work with our students on Design Challenges and capstone projects. We also look for partners who can help shape hands-on skill-building workshops and activities to leverage our students' knowledge and interests.

What makes the MBDS program unique is the practical approach to behavioral and decision sciences, always with an eye on industry applications and scalability. What makes our students unique to your organization is their varied background, interdisciplinary approach, and eagerness to provide real-life solutions to industry challenges.

As an Industry Affiliate, you can:

Join an MBDS Design Challenge

Our goal with the Design Challenges is to drive collaboration between student groups and Industry Affiliates who, together, integrate cutting-edge knowledge into real-life problems. Design Challenges highlight students’ training and range of skillsets in behavioral economics, decision sciences, network analysis, and public policy by connecting behavioral insights to industry questions in an immersive and actionable format.

Lend your expertise

As an Industry Affiliate, you have unique opportunities to share your expertise and individual research areas and focus with our students. Your organization can offer employment opportunities to students, or you can provide case studies and data sets to be used in our courses. We welcome specialists on your team to join one of our classes as guest speakers; lead a lecture on a relevant topic in an MBDS Talk.

Sponsor a conference

Industry Affiliates can provide institutional support and sponsor the Norms and Behavioral Change (NoBeC) Conference, which brings together researchers studying the relationships between social norms and behavioral change. This conference invites researchers and practitioners working at the intersection of social norms and behavioral changes and its applications in economics, psychology, political science, public health, and other adjacent fields.

Contact us

For more information, or to partner with MBDS on any of these opportunities, send an email to penn-mbds@sas.upenn.edu with the subject line “MBDS Industry Affiliate program.” We will discuss your questions and explore ways to become a partner.