BROOKINGS – Eluned Jones, professor and head of South Dakota State University’s Department of Economics, has announced that Annaleena Parhankangas has been selected as the first-ever Milton Nies Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship.

Parhankangas joined the economics department as a tenured associate professor of entrepreneurship July 22.

Her graduate education includes both a master’s degree and doctorate in industrial engineering and management with a primary focus in entrepreneurship, strategy and international business and minor areas in corporate law, industrial psychology and biotechnology.

“Dr. Parhankangas’s strengths complement those already in the department’s portfolio,” Jones said. “As the inaugural Milton Nies Endowed Chair of Entrepreneurship, her teaching experience and productivity as a researcher provide a sound platform for engaging external, as well as internal, stakeholders.

“Dr. Parhankangas has participated in the highest-level invited research conferences in the U.S. on entrepreneurship research, and received awards for the best paper at two Babson-Kauffman Entrepreneurship Research Conferences. In addition, she has received three other best paper awards and a teaching excellence award,” Jones continued.

Parhankangas was most recently a member of the entrepreneurship faculty at the University of Illinois at Chicago, starting there in 2011. She previously was an associate professor and the Henry J. Leir Chair of International Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and a professor at the Helsinki University of Technology.

She has published more than 20 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters and a co-authored book. Parhankangas has made numerous conference presentations, including ones in Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Peru, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. She serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Business Venturing, Venture Capital: An International Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance, International Journal of Technoentrepreneurship, Academy of Management Perspectives and on the board of reviewers for the Babson College Entrepreneurship Research Conference, a prominent annual meeting for entrepreneurship scholars.