Joseph Kalmenovitz graduated in 2012 with a Law and Economics B.A. (double major), magna cum laude, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. During his studies he worked as a research assistant in the Economics Department for Prof. Eugene Kandel and for Prof. Yishay Yafeh. In addition, he worked as a research assistant in the Law School for Prof. Assaf Hamdani. In these positions, he covered topics such as business groups, executive compensation and shareholder voting schemes. He co-authored a joint paper with Prof. Hamdani which explored bond workouts and the restructuring of publicly-traded corporate debt.
The center awards research support on an annual basis to NYU students in finance or corporate law. Past fellows have gone on to pursue careers in academia, professional practice, and government service.
How to Apply:
Applicants must submit the following materials:
- Statement describing academic and research interests
- Proposal for the research project during the Fellowship year
- Curriculum Vitae
- Law School or Business School Academic Transcripts
- A letter of recommendation
- A writing sample, preferably a scholarly paper written in the past two years
Please direct all materials to Stephen Choi and David Yermack, Directors. We prefer that you first e-mail materials to Anat Carmy Wiechman at wiechman@mercury.law.nyu.edu, followed by a physical copy mailed to the NYU Center for Law & Business at 139 MacDougal Street, Room 116, New York, NY 10012.
Please direct inquiries to Anat Carmy Wiechman at wiechman@mercury.law.nyu.edu or (212) 992-6173.
Applications must be received by April 1 and will be reviewed by the Center’s selection committee, which will make a decision by May.
Past Fellows
Alexandros Seretakis
Alexandros (Alex) Seretakis holds a law degree from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He has also received an LLM in banking and finance from the University College in London and an LLM in corporate law from NYU School of Law (2011) where he served as a research assistant. He completed his legal training in Greece and has also worked for the Permanent Mission of Greece to the United Nations Office in Geneva. Alexandros is currently a PhD candidate and a teaching assistant at the University of Luxembourg where he is teaching courses in private and corporate law. He is a member of the bar in Greece and has passed the New York Bar. His doctoral dissertation deals with hedge fund regulation and he hopes to return to the US to conduct research for his thesis.
During his stay at the Pollack Center, Alexandros had conducted research on hedge funds and private equity and completed an article titled, “A Comparative Examination of Private Equity in the U.S. and Europe: Accounting for the Past and Predicting the Future of European Private Equity,” to be published in volume XVIII of the Fordham Journal of Corporate and Financial Law. His research interests revolve around hedge funds, private equity, and corporate law and policy. Alexandros is also an academic member of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI).
Simon Vorburger
Simon Vorburger received his LLM from the NYU School of Law in May 2011 and holds a law degree from the University of Zurich. He has been admitted to the Zurich Bar which allows him to practice in all of Switzerland. He is currently a candidate for a PhD in Law at the University of Zurich, where the title of his dissertation is “International Arbitration and Insolvency—Swiss and American Perspectives.” Simon has been awarded the Swiss National Science Foundation Scholarship for his research. Upon completion of his doctoral dissertation, Simon plans to become a lecturer in international arbitration and litigation at an academic institution.
From 2008 to 2009, Simon was an associate at the Swiss firm Walder Wyss & Partners. He was also a lecturer in law at Rapperswil Business School in Rapperswil Switzerland from 2007 to 2008.
Rosa Comella
Rosa Comella holds her doctoral degree (SJD 2004) and her masters degree (LLM 1996) from Harvard University, as well as a doctoral degree and law degree from the University of Zaragoza. She was formerly an associate professor of law at the University of Zaragoza. In 2005, Rosa was appointed the Emile Noël Fellow at NYU Law. Her work focuses on comparative studies between the US and European Union with a special focus on environmental regulation.
Lise Pedersen
Lise Pedersen received her LLM from the NYU School of Law in May 2004 and holds law degrees from Stockholm University and the University of Copenhagen. She is currently engaged in research focusing on corporate directors’ fiduciary duties as well as the legal and economic aspects of financial contracting, particularly with respect to hedge funds.
From 2000 to 2003, Lise was an associate at Plesner Svane Groenborg, a large Danish firm, working with corporate law, corporate finance, and securities law issues, as well as contracts and litigation. Also, she worked for two ministries in Denmark and interned with the International Trade Centre (UNCTAD/WTO) in Geneva, Switzerland.
Florencia Marotta Wurgler
Florencia received her JD from NYU Law in 2001 and a BA in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1996. Her research and teaching interests include corporate law, contracts, commercial law, economics analysis of law, and bankruptcy. Her most recent research project, “Minding the Gap in Liquidated Damage Clauses: Why Courts Should Stop Insisting on the Penalty Doctrine,” questions the ability of contract law’s penalty doctrine to efficiently deal with the complexities created by unforeseen contingencies. Currently, she is pursuing empirical research on standard terms in Internet contracts.
In 2003-04, Florencia was the Corporate Fellow at the Center for Corporate, Securities, and Financial Law at Fordham Law School, where she taught the Corporations course. From 2001 to 2003, she was an associate in the corporate group at Davis Polk & Wardwell.
Vinay B. Nair
Vinay received his doctorate in finance from the Stern School of Business after completing his undergraduate degree in engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, where he received the Governor’s Gold Medal. Vinay’s research deals with issues related to corporate governance, corporate finance, firm valuatio,n and firm organization. He is currently an Assisant Professor of Finance at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Galya Levy
Galya Levy received her LLM from NYU School of Law in May 2003. She has an LLB from Haifa University in Israel, and an MBA from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She currently resides in Jerusalem.
Galya’s graduate studies at NYU focused on corporate law, securities regulation, mergers and acquisitions, and international trade. In addition, she conducted research on the risks involved in financial derivatives trading. During her year of fellowship at the Center, she wrote an article on the uses of ambiguity in commercial contracts to be published in a forthcoming book on contract law by the London School of Economics.
Today, Galya serves as a senior advisor to the Israeli Minister of National Infrastructure. The ministry in in charge of energy and water in Israel, including the oil, fuel, gas, and electricity sectors. The Minister of National Infrastructure, Joseph Partiszky, is a member of the Shinui Party, which is committed to the separation of church and state, the privatization of companies managed by the states, and the promotion of a liberal economy in Israel. Galya’s work focuses on privatization, restructuring, and market regulation. She is involved in the process of the establishment of a new natural gas system in Israel. She coordinates with the Ministry’s intervention with the Government and Parliament, and she oversees the restructuring of the Monopoly of the Israeli Refineries Company.
Olga Filipenko
Olga received her MS in math from Tulane University and a BS in aerospace engineering from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. Her research interests include corporate finance, incomplete contracting and structure, and design and boundaries of firms. Her work for the center focused on projects related to the rationale for strategic alliances and joint ventures. While she has conducted both theoretical and empirical research, her empirical research projects have dealt with the optimality of the different contractual features in strategic alliance agreements. She is currently the vice president and senior credit officer of Moody’s Investor Services.
Umut Kolcuoglu
Umut received his LLM from NYU School of Law in May 2001 and has an LLB from Istanbul University School of Law in Turkey. From 1998 to 2000 he was an associate at an Istanbul law firm and focused on cross-border corporate transactions. His research interests include corporate and contractual governance, joint ventures, and equity linkages in strategic alliances. Umut is the co-author of “The New Turkish Banking Law,” published in the Global Banking and Financial Law Review 2000-02.
Michal Gal
Michal received her JSD from the University of Toronto and served as a postdoctoral fellow of the center for two years. Her principal academic interest is optimal competition policy for small economies with a specific focus on merger and oligopoly regulation. In addition to lecturing in some classes and seminars during her first semester as a fellow, she presented her work on the interface between competition policy and intellectual property at the International conference organized by the American Bar Association Antitrust Division and the Israeli Antitrust Authority. Other research interests include a novel solution to deal with oligopolistic markets through the introduction of government-supported maverick firms and a new look at the regulation of essential facilities. She is currently a senior lecturer at the University of Haifa School of Law in Israel.
Yiming Qian
Yiming worked at the center as a research fellow for Professor Robert Daines. Her research interests include corporate finance, corporate governance, and banking. Her work has examined the role of markets and banks in allocational efficiency, bank management compensation structures, and design of management compensation structures that elicit optimal degrees of competition and cooperation in multi-divisional firms. Yiming has conducted both theoretical and empirical research and now serves as an Associate Professor of Finance at the University of Iowa.
Claudia Agostinis
Claudia is a scholar in the field of comparative law from the University of Milan School of Law in Italy. She received her LLM from the NYU School of Law in 2001 and concentrated her research efforts on the law of business finance for small enterprise in common law countries. She is currently an associate in the corporate and commercial law department of Baker & McKenzie in Milan, Italy.
Charu G. Raheja
Charu received her doctoral degree from the Stern School of Business in 2000 and has written on the importance of inside directors in corporate governance. She is now Assistant Professor of Finance at the Owen School of Management, Vanderbilt University.