Smith Finance PhD Program: Current Students

Kyoung-hun Bae
Office: 3330J Van Munching Hall
Email: kbae@rhsmith.umd.edu

Kyoung-hun joined the Smith finance PhD program in 2010. He received a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and a master's degree in finance both from Seoul National University in Korea. Before joining the program at the University of Maryland, he was a doctoral student in economics at the University of Texas at Austin, majoring in industrial organization. His current research interests include financial economics and corporate finance.

Don Bowen

Don Bowen joined the finance program in 2012 after taking graduate courses in the finance department at the University of Rochester. He received a BS in economics and a BS in finance from Arizona State, where he minored in mathematics and wrote his honors thesis on treasury auctions. His current research focuses on the intersection of IO and corporate finance.

Wen Chen
Office: 3330 Van Munching Hall
Email: wenchen@rhsmith.umd.edu

Wen Chen joined the Robert H. Smith finance PhD program in 2011. She received her bachelor’s degree in physics from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), and a PhD in physics from University of California San Diego (UCSD). Her current research interests include market microstructure and asset pricing.

Peter Dixon
Email: peter.dixon@rhsmith.umd.edu

Peter joined the Smith finance PhD program in 2012. He received a master's in statistics-econometrics from the University of Utah where he was the 2011 econometrics student of the year. He also holds a bachelor's degree in financial economics from Brigham Young University-Idaho. Prior to joining the Smith School he worked as a financial analyst for Intermountain Healthcare in Utah. His current research interests are empirical corporate finance and empirical asset pricing. 

Anne Duquerroy
Office: 3330 Van Munching Hall
Email: aduquerroy@rhsmith.umd.edu

Anne Duquerroy joined the Robert H. Smith finance PhD program in 2011. She received an MS in management from Audencia Nantes School of Management (France) and a master’s degree in economics from Sciences Po Paris (France). Her current research interests include risk management, systemic risk and financial regulation. 

Xiaoyuan Hu
Office: 3330 Van Munching Hall
Email: xiaoyuanhu@rhsmith.umd.edu

Xiaoyuan Hu joined the Robert H. Smith Finance PhD program in 2011. She received a BA in economics and finance from Tsinghua University in China in July, 2011. During her undergraduate study, she attended a full-time exchange program in the University of Manchester, UK. Her current research interests include empirical corporate finance, corporate governance, law and finance, and financial institutions.

Nitin Kumar
Office: 3330 Van Munching Hall
Phone: 301-314-9152
Email: nkumar@rhsmith.umd.edu

Nitin studied at the Indian Institute of Technology (Kanpur), India, for his bachelor's and at the Indian Statistical Institute (Calcutta), India, for his master's degree. His current broad areas of interest are mutual funds, institutional investing and financial markets.

Jeongmin Lee
Email: jeongmin@rhsmith.umd.edu
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Jeongmin joined the finance PhD Program in 2008. She was awarded a full graduate assistantship, along with a dean's summer research fellowship. Jeongmin got her BS in mathematics from POSTECH in 2005 and MS in management engineering (concentration in finance) in 2008 from KAIST Business School, both in Korea. Her current research interests include theoretical market microstructure and asset pricing.

Wei Li
Email: liwei@rhsmith.umd.edu
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Wei Li joined the program in 2008. Prior to Maryland, he obtained graduate and undergraduate degrees in engineering and statistics from Purdue, Tsinghua, and Zhejiang University. He is interested in both theoretical and empirical research on asset pricing and market microstructure.

Danmo Lin
Email: danlin@rhsmith.umd.edu

Prior to joining the Finance program in 2009, Danmo studied economics as an undergraduate student at the Central University of Finance and Economics (China), and later as a PhD student at Stony Brook University. Her previous professional experience includes organizing for the 18th and 19th International Game Theory Festival and teaching game theory at Stony Brook University. Danmo has a joint paper "Dividends and Capital Gains Taxation under Incomplete Markets" forthcoming in the Journal of Monetary Economics. Her current research interest is in corporate finance combined with an IO perspective.

Benjamin Munyan
Email: bmunyan@rhsmith.umd.edu

Benjamin joined the PhD program in 2009. He received dual BS degrees in mathematics and in economics from Arizona State University. There he was involved in many undergraduate research programs for the mathematical sciences - some of which were published or presented at undergraduate research conferences. His current research interests include market structure and theory, risk management, and corporate and international finance.

Olya Rachtchinine
Office: 3330 Van Munching Hall
Email: orachtchinine@rhsmith.umd.edu

Olya joined the Smith finance PhD program in 2011. She received a specialist degree in mathematics from Omsk State University in 1999 and MS in finance from the University of Maryland, Robert H. Smith Business School in 2011. Her current research interests include financial regulation and systemic risk. 

Anshuman Sinha
Office: 1308E Van Munching Hall
Phone: 301-314-9024
Email: asinha@rhsmith.umd.edu

Anshuman Sinha's research interest include asset pricing theory, debt and renegotiation, real estate economics, survival and price impact and general equilibrium theory . He has bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics from Delhi University. He has taught an upper level undergraduate course in international finance at the Robert H. Smith School of Business and won a top-15% teaching award in 2010.

Austin Starkweather
Office: 3330J Van Munching Hall
Email: astark@umd.edu
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Prior to joining the finance PhD program, Austin Starkweather spent several years working in corporate finance, mostly focused on buy-side corporate acquisition analysis, internal financial planning and credit agreement management. Before this, he spent time in China teaching English and working with a microfinance non-profit. He completed his BA in 2004 from Princeton University, majoring in economics and minoring in east Asian studies and Chinese. He speaks both Spanish and Mandarin with decent proficiency, though always appreciates opportunities to improve either. His research interests include international and corporate finance.

Onur Tosun
Office: 3330J Van Munching Hall
Email: otosun@rhsmith.umd.edu 
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Onur Tosun joined the finance department in 2008. Prior to the Smith School of Business, he received an MBA degree from Bogazici University, Turkey, where he taught statistics and statistical analysis courses at the department of management. He attended Istanbul Technical University, Turkey for his undergraduate studies, attaining a bachelor of science in industrial engineering. During his undergraduate and graduate education, Onur conducted research in the fields of logistics, marketing, and finance and participated in various international conferences. He also published one of his works with the Journal of Global Optimization. Onur was awarded a full graduate assistantship and a dean's summer research fellowship for his PhD studies at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland. His current research interests include empirical corporate finance: executive compensation, capital structure and corporate governance.