Ramana Nanda is Professor of Entrepreneurial Finance and Academic Lead for the Institute of Deep Tech Entrepreneurship at Imperial, a Research Fellow in the Financial Economics Programme of the CEPR and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Business School.

His research examines financing frictions facing new ventures, with an aim to help entrepreneurs with fundraising and to shed light on how financial intermediaries, corporate R&D and policy makers can improve the odds of selecting and commercializing the most promising ideas and technologies in the economy.

For the academic years 2007 through 2020, Ramana was on the full-time faculty of Harvard Business School, most recently as Sarofim-Rock Professor and co-director of the Private Capital Project.  He received his Ph.D. from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and has a BA and MA in Economics from Trinity College, Cambridge, U.K. He is a recipient of the 2020 ERC Consolidator Grant and 2015 Kauffman Prize Medal, that is awarded annually to one scholar under age 40 whose research has made a significant contribution to the literature in entrepreneurship.

Prior to starting his Ph.D., Ramana was based in the London and New York offices of Oliver, Wyman & Company, where he worked primarily with clients in global capital markets as well as in small-business banking.  He continues to advise startup ventures on their financing strategies and also works with philanthropists and investors looking to back “deep tech” entrepreneurial solutions to global challenges.