At 19 years old, IU Northwest student Philip Mitreski is ahead of the curve.

Mitreski has traveled the country and the world showcasing his research on uranium and wealth management. The business major has had three papers in peer-reviewed journals. He’s on pace to graduate college a year and a half early.

“I’m focused on a specialized niche,” Mitreski said in a press release. “It’s more or less my personal anticipation of what the future economic needs of the United States might be, because, I think, having expertise, specifically on renewable energy and nuclear energy, is going to become very important in the next decade or so.”

A Crown Point native, Mitreski attended IU Bloomington’s Kelley School of Business during his first semester of college. He participated in a competition to analyze and pitch a stock with the biggest upside. Mitreski picked Cameco Corp., a global provider of uranium for energy. His team lost.

“The funny part is the judge ended up being completely wrong,” Mitreski said. “My valuation for the company ended up being within 3%. … That kind of led me into uranium specifically.”

Mitreski’s first paper, invited to be published in the “Journal of Business and Behavioral Science,” showed how the fluctuations in the price of uranium had an outsized impact on the price of energy. Mitreski’s two other papers were published in the “Journal of International Finance and Economics” and the “Journal of the Academy of Business and Economics.”

In March, Mitreski attended the American Society of Business and Behavioral Sciences Conference in Los Angeles and won the best paper award. He also presented his work at the International Academy of Business and Economics Conference in Hanoi, Vietnam. Mitreski recently completed a two-month internship in Washington, D.C.

Mitreski said he doesn’t know what the future holds, but he has a plan, whether it’s getting an internship opportunity in investment banking, furthering his education at the graduate level or staying at IU Northwest while working on a statistical model for unemployment data.

“I’ve got a lot of different paths I’m looking at,” Mitreski said. “I’ve been networking quite a bit, so I’m going to try and tap into that right now.”

Caption: Philip Mitreski presents his work at the International Academy of Business and Economics Conference in Hanoi, Vietnam. (photo provided by IU Northwest)