Krishi Kishore, a graduating Indian American student from Harvard College has won the 2025 John T. Dunlop Undergraduate Thesis Prize in Business and Government for writing the best thesis on a challenging public policy issue.
Kishore won the $2,000 prize for his thesis “Drugs and Deals: Understanding Biopharmaceutical Venture Capital Performance and Behavior,” the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government (M-RCBG) at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government announced.
He is graduating from Harvard College with an A.B. in applied mathematics in economics, molecular and cellular biology secondary.
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The John T. Dunlop Thesis Prize in Business and Government is awarded to graduating seniors who write the best thesis on a challenging public policy issue at the interface of business and government.
This year’s winning thesis by Kishore examines how venture capital plays a critical role in funding the production of life sciences innovation and life-saving therapies in young biopharmaceutical companies but many venture capital investors perceive these investments as risky and unattractive.
Because biopharmaceutical venture capital performance has been sparsely studied in academic literature, he designed a Monte Carlo simulation for biopharmaceutical investing which reveals that higher returns are correlated with more deals, smaller funds, more co-investing, less deal contributions, and a preference for early-stage and mid-stage investments.
Kishore has found that the discrepancy between current biopharmaceutical venture capital strategy and optimal strategy may indicate that venture capital investors can improve their returns by modifying their strategy, encouraging further investment in the sector.
In explaining why the center chose to award the John Dunlop Prize to Kishore this year, John A. Haigh, co-director of M-RCBG, said that “Krishi’s thesis was impressive in its conception and execution. It represents the type of excellent analysis and policy recommendations at the intersection of business and government that we value so highly here at the center.”
John T. Dunlop, the Lamont University Professor Emeritus, was a widely respected labor economist who served as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences from 1969 to 1973. An adviser to many U.S. presidents, beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dunlop was secretary of labor under Gerald Ford, serving from March 1975 to January 1976.