Accounting Newsletter: June 2025

The Smith School celebrated accounting graduates with an annual cocktail reception for undergraduate and MS students. Over 255 students, faculty, advisory council members, sponsors and guests attended the event which recognizes the students and highlights their experiences. READ MORE

Students Find Success in EY UMD AI Forensic Case Competition
Students used AI, data analytics and forensic accounting skills to think creatively and critically during the EY University of Maryland AI Forensic Case Competition. READ MORE 

Global Experts Gather at UMD for Financial Information Systems and Cybersecurity Forum
The forum was co-hosted on January 8, 2025, by the Smith School and UMD's School of Public Policy. It was directed by professors Lawrence A. Gordon, Charles Harry, Martin P. Loeb and William Lucyshyn. Attendees of the forum included representatives from the World Bank, the Federal Reserve Bank, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, University of Michigan, National Taiwan University, University of Tokyo, The Ohio State University, Rutgers University, General Dynamics and Verizon. READ MORE

Jacqueline Cardello '93, CPA, president and managing partner of GRF CPAs & Advisors, earned the Hillman Award for decades of impact in accounting and community work. READ MORE

Lexy Kessler ’85 was named chair of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). She has worked with the same core firm since college. When that firm, Rockville, Md.-based Aronson LLC, merged in 2023 with Aprio, Kessler became the Mid-Atlantic leader for the Atlanta-based top-25 firm. She remains an Aprio partner but has stepped away from the Mid-Atlantic leadership role to concentrate on her duties as AICPA and association chair. READ MORE

In his four-decade accounting career, Samuel Handwerger was always stoked by fraud inspections, his best chance to help society. When he learned a few years ago of the Justice for Fraud Victims Project, created in 2010 at Gonzaga University, he sought to build an affiliate at UMD. Just a year into the program’s existence, the students never expected to be pulled into a murder case. READ MORE

Student-Run Tax Assistance Helps UMD Community and Residents
TerpTax was launched in 2015 after then-accounting chair Martin Loeb suggested reviving a defunct UMD tax assistance program to help people around the community. Samuel Handwerger conducted a trial run with just six undergraduate student volunteers helping 40 people complete their returns. By 2023, the number of clients ballooned to 1,100. TerpTax isn’t vastly different from what you’d find at H&R Block—other than it’s free. The organization offers a spectrum of services, from tax forms and how-to-videos to full tax filings for U.S. citizens and residents, as well as non-resident aliens. READ MORE

Faculty in School and Department Leadership

• Rebecca Hann – Associate Dean for Research and PhD Programs
• Emanuel Zur – Associate Dean of Specialty Masters Programs
• Progyan Basu – Executive Director – Smith Speakers Series
• Lei Zhou – Academic Director of MS-Accounting Program
• Nicholas Seybert – PhD Program Coordinator
• Jeff Milton – Department Coordinator of External Relations

Faculty Teaching Excellence

• University Distinguished Scholar-Teacher – Rebecca Hann (2022)
• Krowe Award – Lu Zhang (2025), Lei Zhou (2024), Emanuel Zur (2022), Sam Handwerger (2022)
• Legg Mason Award for Teaching Innovation – Jim McKinney (2024)

Faculty Community Impact Award

• Inaugural Provost’s Do Good Innovator Award – Sam Handwerger (2024)

Faculty Research Awards

Sean Cao

• Award recipient of Deloitte Initiative for AI and Learning for developing trustworthy AI for social equity and climate change
• “How to Talk When Machines are Listening: Corporate Disclosure in the Age of AI” (with Wei Jiang, Baozhong Yang, and Alan Zhang), The Review of Financial Studies, September 2023
  • Michael J. Brennan Award for the best paper published in Review of Financial Studies, 2024
  • Winner of the AMTD FinTech Centre Prize, 2022 Asian Finance Association Conference
  • Best Paper Award Winner, 2021 CAPANA Research Conference
• “From Man vs. Machine to Man + Machine: The Art and AI of Stock Analyses” (with Wei Jiang, Junbo Wang, and Baozhong Yang), Journal of Financial Economics, October 2024
  • American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) Best paper award winner, 2022 Midwest Finance Association
  • Best Paper Award Winner, 2022 Global AI Finance Conference, 2022 CFRC Conference (PBC School of Finance, Tsinghua University), 2022 Annual Conference in Digital Economics, 2022 SFS Cavalcade Asia-Pacific Conference
• Guest Associate Editor, Management Science (2021 – Present)
• Advisory Board and Guest Editor for Big Data and Applied AI, British Accounting Review (2022 – Present)
• Guest Editor for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Corporate Finance, Pacific-Basin Finance Journal (2023 – Present)
• Editor, China Journal of Accounting Research (2024 – Present)

Larry Gordon

• Listed Among World's Best Scientists in 2023 Research.com's Ranking
• Editorial Board, Journal of Information Systems (2013 - present)
• Honorary Editor of the Journal of Accounting and Public Policy

Rebecca Hann

• Distinguished Scholar-Teacher, University of Maryland (2022)
• “Foreign Direct Investment, Outsourcing Investor Protection, and the Role of Accounting Transparency” (with Heedong Kim, Seungjun Kim, and Viktoriya Zotova)
  • Outstanding Paper, 2022 IAS Mid-year Meeting
• Editorial Board, The Accounting Review (2014 – present)

Michael Kimbrough

• “Does Voluntary ESG Reporting Resolve Disagreement among ESG Rating Agencies?” (with Frank Wang, Sijing Wei, and Iris Zhang), European Accounting Review, February 2024
  • Best paper published in European Accounting Research in 2024, presented at the  EAA conference in Rome, Italy in May 2025.
• "AI-Powered Analysts" (with Leonard Yang Liu and Musa Subasi)
  • Outstanding Paper Award in FinTech, 2024 Southern Finance Association
• Editorial Board, The Accounting Review (2008 – present)

Nick Seybert

• Outstanding Manuscript Award at the AAA/ABO Conference (2023)
• Editor (Financial/Experimental track), Behavioral Research in Accounting (2024 - 2027)
• Editorial Board, Accounting, Organizations and Society (2025 – 2028)

Musa Subasi

• "AI-Powered Analysts" (with Michael Kimbrough and Leonard Yang Liu)
  • Outstanding Paper Award in FinTech, 2024 Southern Finance Association
• Associate Editor, British Accounting Review (2023 – 2024)

Student Honors

• Elijah Watt Sells Award - Esther Weissman (2023)
• Inaugural class of 10 Deloitte Foundation Scholars graduated in 2024
• PCAOB Scholarship Program – Ababakar Sow (2024), Yueyu Wong (2023), Blosso Vasco (2023), Ei Aung (2022), YiYi Zhou (2022)
• Outstanding Chapter at 2024 Eastern Region NABALink Conference - UMD NABA Chapter
• MACPA Foundation Scholarships - 12 recipients in 2024
• MSA Scholarship Foundation of Maryland Society of Accountants (MSA) and the Maryland Society of Accounting and Tax Professionals (MSATP) – 9 recipients in 2024
• Long Jiang Graduate Fellowship in Business - Jingwen Yang (2024)
• University of Maryland Faculty-Student Research Awards – Jingwen Yang (2024-2025)
• Deloitte Doctoral Foundation Fellowship – Jingwen Yang (2023)

PhD Student Placements

• Jingwen Yang (2025) – Pennsylvania State University
• Lu Yan (2024) – University of Tulsa
• Juan Castillo (2024) – Universidad de Santiago de Chile
• Laurel Mazur (2022)– University of Notre Dame
• Ariel Rava (2022) – Harvard Law School Center for Corporate Governance