Home  |  Biography Biography[ DOWNLOAD RESUME PDF ] About Soma Somasundaram For the past sixteen years, Dr. Somasundaram (Soma) has been an Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of San Diego. Soma has a Ph.D. in Management Science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, an MBA from the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada; an MBA from Panjab University in India and a B.A. (Honours) in Economics and Mathematics from the University of Delhi in India. Recently, he completed a course on Managing Brand Meanings at the Harvard Business School. Soma is active in consulting with tele-communication, semiconductor capital equipment, automotive and consumer packaged goods companies. His most recent consulting engagements were with Eli Lilly (www.lilly.com), Flextronics (www.flextronics.com), Nokia (www.nokia.com) and Cymer Inc (www.cymer.com). For Nokia, Dr. Somasundaram presented to the Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President (CDMA) the results of his investigation into rapid developments in "middleware" and the strategic implications of wireless handset evolution into "thin clients". Soma also studied for Flextronics the functional capabilities required in Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and wireless Smartphones over the next 5 years. He led a team that developed a technology roadmap for wireless data enabled devices that would have to be developed by Palm (www.palm.com), Motorola (www.motorola.com), Kyocera (www.kyocera-wireless.com), SONY-Ericsson (www.palm.com), Motorola (www.motorola.com), Kyocera (www.sonyericsson.com) and Hewlett-Packard (www.hp.com) by integrating their product design and manufacturing strategies with ODMs (Acer, Leo, HTC, Legend) in China, Taiwan and Korea. Soma teaches Marketing Management and Consumer Behavior courses in the USD School of Business Administration. Recently he taught a course on Strategic Alliances and Technology Transfer in Emerging Markets in Beijing and Shanghai. His academic interests are brand valuation and brand equity, consumer satisfaction and the role of warranties and other cues on perceptions of product quality. Prior to enrolling in the Ph.D. program, Soma held brand management and field sales management positions in India and Nigeria. Soma is married to Sudha and has a ten-year-old daughter Pooja. The family enjoys boating, camping and travel especially to the Canadian Rockies. These links are provided as a convenient resource: Course Information Download White Papers Visit BrandAce.com Who is Doc Soma? OFFICE HOURS Mon and Wed 3:00 - 5:30 p.m. or by appointment. Email Soma or call 619.260.4889. I encourage you to contact me by e-mail first to maximize our productivity.