Sean Cao Directory Page

The Smith AI Initiative

Dr. Cao is the Director and Founding faculty of the AI Initiative for Capital Market Research and holds the position of associate professor (with tenure) at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland. Additionally, he is an affiliated professor at Harvard Business School (D^3 Institute). Dr. Cao's research primarily revolves around the applications and implications of AI for capital markets, encompassing both accounting and finance studies. His overarching aim is to establish a meaningful connection between academic AI research and its impact on industry applications and regulatory considerations, its influence on industry applications and regulatory considerations, ultimately benefiting both business faculty and students.

Dr. Cao's research work has gained prominence in respected media outlets such as the Financial Times, CNBC, Bloomberg, The Guardian, Quartz, and IR Magazine. Over the years, he has delivered more than 100 invited research talks at national regulatory and policy-advisory agencies, such as Central Bank of Japan, Central Bank of Thailand, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as well as major research universities, including Columbia, Harvard, MIT Sloan, University of Cambridge, and University of Michigan. His research papers, some co-authored with PhD students, have received several best paper awards at prestigious conferences and have been published in leading journals in finance, accounting, and computer science including Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Review of Financial Studies, The Accounting Review, Contemporary Accounting Research, Management Science, and IEEE Computer. Dr. Cao also contributes as a guest associate editor at Management Science and serves as a track chair for Big Data, Fintech, and Blockchain at the American Accounting Association.

Dr. Cao is deeply committed to helping business communities through his research. In addition to his role in founding and leading the AI initiative at the University of Maryland, he has been honored with an award from the Deloitte Initiative for AI and Learning (DIAL). In the Deloitte program, he plays a pivotal role in developing AI solutions for social inclusion and climate change. His research has been presented and applied in leading professional firms such as Alliance Bernstein (AB), Balyasny Asset Management (BAM), State Street Boston Headquarters, Wolfe Investment Research, Accenture, Grant Thornton, and NIV Asset.

In 2020 and 2022, Dr. Cao co-chaired conferences with the Review of Financial Studies (dual submission) on Fintech and Machine Learning. These conferences attracted an average of 150 high-quality submissions annually in the field of AI and Fintech, totaling approximately 500 working papers over three years, contributed by preeminent scholars in finance and accounting. For more information, please visit https://sites.google.com/view/seancao/home.

Dr. Cao's passion for research extends to his teaching. He is dedicated to providing students with the latest learning materials, emphasizing a robust data analytics component to prepare them for successful careers. His teaching abilities have been recognized, with him being ranked in the top 10 percent for outstanding teaching university-wide at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and well-received in the classroom at the University of Maryland. In his PhD seminar at the University of Maryland, he blends classical capital market research with emerging technologies. Dr. Cao has been invited externally by major research universities to teach short-term doctoral seminars on AI and Fintech for both finance and accounting departments. Furthermore, he also writes a AI textbook for accounting/finance and runs a tutorial blog site (YouTube: Sean Cao_Fintech or Bilibili ID: Seancao_) that designed to assist scholars outside of computer science in seamlessly integrating machine learning into finance and accounting research.