Finance student Ruixue (Rachel) Gao<\/a> has been studying the participation and impact of female inventors in green technology innovation. Her research found the participation of female inventors in green technology is rising, and environmental patents involving female inventors generate higher economic value. It also found publicly traded US firms with female environmental inventors produce more follow-on green innovations and invest more in research and development activities in subsequent years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Operations and management science student Shirin Shahsavand<\/a> has been analyzing the fast-fashion industry and the devasting environmental impacts stemming from discarded clothing. She is modeling the economic viability of retailer take-back programs that would provide discounts on new items when customers return old, unwanted clothes. The return process would redirect the old clothing for proper reuse or recycling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pingping Tang<\/a>, another operations and management science student, has been examining the prevalence of \u201clightning deals\u201d on the Amazon.com platform. These are very short-term sales that offer deep discounts. Entrepreneurial startups, in particular, can use lightning deals to gain product awareness and move up the all-important vendor ranking list for their respective product class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two examples from former students include hospitality and tourism management graduate Demi Deng<\/a>, who studied innovative approaches to Washington wine marketing, and management graduate Smita Srivastava<\/a>, who had a project titled, \u201cBeing Alert and Imagining Idea: All About Entrepreneurs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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