Dr. Patrick McHugh is a Professor of the Practice in the School of Engineering at Brown University where he teaches courses in entrepreneurship, finance and strategy at the undergraduate, graduate and executive levels. His research interests focus on legitimacy and network theory in the context of social media and decision making. His work has been published in the Journal of General Management, Journal of Management and Organizations, Journal of Prediction Markets, and MIS Quarterly Executive. He has over 25 years of industry experience with technology companies, including executive roles at three venture-backed data security firms. Earlier initiatives include building a call center automation services practice for GTE leveraging artificial intelligence and speech recognition (winner of the GTE Chairman’s Leadership Award) and an online financial services offering leveraging social media while at IBM Credit Corp (growing assets under management to more than $400 million within 12 months of launch).  He is the recipient of two patents in the area of call center automation and holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in engineering from Columbia University, an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, and a Ph.D. in management from Bentley University.  Dr. McHugh is Director of the Brown University School of Engineering Masters program in Innovation Management & Entrepreneurship (PRIME), former Director of the IE Brown Executive MBA program, fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, board member of Fractal Antenna Systems, and a member of the Cherrystone Angel Group, with current investments in Nodar and Laurent Pharmaceuticals.