Hello! I’m Ciro, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Amsterdam, conducting research at the intersection of management and natural language processing (NLP). I am part of the Entrepreneurship & Innovation section, led by Martin Obschonka. My Ph.D. supervisors are Nachoem Wijnberg, Balazs Szatmari, and Jonathan Sitruk. I have been a visiting scholar at the House of Innovation, Stockholm School of Economics, where I collaborated with Holmer Kok.

My research

My research is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme. I am interested in how we can detect emerging scientific fields and how these affect venture financing, and alliance formation, with specific emphasis on text analysis. In 2023, I was awarded a research grant by the European Academy of Management to investigate the influence of exaggeration on venture financing.

My supervision

So far, I have mentored over 35 master’s and bachelor’s students on various topics that extend beyond the boundaries of my own Ph.D. investigations (e.g., AI and innovation, hype, social entrepreneurship, sustainability). Some of these students were involved in thesis projects conducted collaboratively between the university and corporate settings, often resulting in subsequent employment by the company. Notably, some of my students have been recognized as finalists for prestigious awards. Specifically, in 2024, one of my master’s students emerged as one of the top three finalists for the ASF Thesis Prize (€1500), sponsored by the University of Amsterdam. Additionally, in both 2022 and 2023, two of my master’s students were among the top three finalists for the George Molenkamp Sustainability Thesis Award (€1000), sponsored by KPMG and the University of Amsterdam.

My teaching

Throughout the years, I have actively participated in numerous courses within the Business Administration track at the University of Amsterdam. These include courses such as “Innovation Management,” “Entrepreneurship in Science and Technology,” “Digital Innovation and Entrepreneurship,” and “Digital Business Models.” You can find further details about these courses here.

My background

I obtained my master’s degree in Economics & Finance and my bachelor’s degree in Economics at the University of Pavia, Department of Economics and Management. My master’s thesis entitled “Empirical Testing of One-Factor Capital Asset Pricing Model and Arbitrage Pricing Theory: Evidence from the Italian Stock Market” was supervised by Enrico Cotta Ramusino. During my graduate studies, I worked as an academic and private tutor, student guidance counsellor and assistant at the secretarial office of the University of Pavia. I also have professional working experience as an intern in public administration.