Mahan Mostafavi's Blog Post #7: June 27, 2024 | 2024 Lehigh-in-Milan with Professor Gupta

CSR

This week in our CSR course, we focused on the role that DEI plays in a corporation and the exploitation of Ozempic and if corporations can regulate themselves without a market strategy. Additionally, we focused on the role of stakeholder capitalism, ESGs, and the role the Business Roundtable plays as the forefront for CEO recognition. I thought it was really interesting to discuss the Ozempic article because I was really invested in learning about the Sackler family oxycontin crisis. It is eye opening to see history repeat itself in plain sight and how companies can exploit a product to increase production and profits. Moreover, I thought learning about the role of stakeholder capitalism was a compelling way for corporations to function with the goal that shareholder welfare can be only achieved by stakeholder welfare.

Internship

This week for my internship, I focused on narrowing down my Step 8 for their toolkit analysis for Trash2Treasure. I provided a more simplified approach on explaining how to use the BLIPS device. Domenico emphasized that this would be to be a simplified approach because it would be used in various countries. Additionally, I provided guiding pictures to clearly demonstrate the proper steps needed to be taken in order to effectively use the device and examine microplastics at a microscopic level. Also, Domenico invited me to meet with a well-known researcher named Margherita Ferrante who has devoted her lab at the University of Catania to focus on the role of microplastics in the environment. Unfortunately, there were some technical issues and we did not meet this week, so we rescheduled for the following week. I look forward to speaking with her and about some of her papers I read.

Cultural Immersion

This weekend my friends and I went to Nervi in Genoa to stay at our friend Luca’s apartment with his parents. I arrived late the first night so we got pizza for dinner and it was probably some of the best pizza I’ve had on this trip. The following day we took a train to Camogli to go to the beach. We had a specialty dish from Camogli called focaccia col formaggio which is an exclusive dish only to a few cities in Genoa. It’s pretty much a thin piece of focaccia bread stuffed with a special type of cheese. Later that night Luca got us his favorite pesto sauce and I’ve had nothing like it. It was the best pesto I’ve ever tasted in my life and will probably stay that way. On Monday, we watched Italy vs. Croatia played in the Euros at the bar across from Aparto, and Italy tied the game in extra time to lock them in and advance to the next round. The whole bar went crazy. I’m excited to watch more euro games in the last weeks of our trip in Milan.