Rajesh Bagchi, associate professor of marketing in the Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Tech, was recently named Richard E. Sorensen Junior Faculty Fellow by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.

The Richard E. Sorensen Junior Faculty Fellowship was established in 2004, through a gift from Ferguson Enterprises, in recognition of Sorensen's many contributions as dean of the Pamplin College of Business and the long-standing relationship of the college with Ferguson Enterprises. Sorensen served as dean from 1982 to 2013. The fellowship recognizes teaching and research excellence. Recipients retain the appointment for a three-year period.

Bagchi joined the Virginia Tech faculty in 2008 and was promoted to associate professor in 2012. In just seven years, Bagchi has assembled a notable record of research on consumer processing of numerical information in decision making.

His scholarship earned him a Young Scholar award from the Marketing Science Institute in 2013. Recognition of his research has extended beyond academia with media coverage and interviews on television news programs; newspapers, including USA Today and the Boston Globe; and magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly.

His service to his professional organizations has been significant. He has co-chaired scholarly conference tracks and serves on the editorial review boards of four journals, including two of the top journals in the marketing field. He received the Outstanding Reviewer Award from the Journal of Consumer Research in 2014.

Bagchi is also an accomplished teacher, having received a Pamplin College of Business Teaching Excellence Award in 2014. He has chaired or served on eight doctoral dissertation committees.

Bagchi received a bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai, a master’s degree from the University of Cincinnati, and a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado.

Dedicated to its motto, Ut Prosim (That I May Serve), Virginia Tech takes a hands-on, engaging approach to education, preparing scholars to be leaders in their fields and communities. As the commonwealth’s most comprehensive university and its leading research institution, Virginia Tech offers 240 undergraduate and graduate degree programs to more than 31,000 students and manages a research portfolio of $513 million. The university fulfills its land-grant mission of transforming knowledge to practice through technological leadership and by fueling economic growth and job creation locally, regionally, and across Virginia.

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