PhD students awarded travel grants to attend prestigious finance conference

10 Oct 2017
PhD essay winners Hossein Rad, Maggie Liu, and Dewan Rahman
PhD essay winners Hossein Rad, Maggie Liu, and Dewan Rahman

Four outstanding PhD students from UQ Business School’s finance discipline have been awarded travel grants to attend the American Finance Association (AFA).

The AFA is a prestigious academic organisation that is dedicated to the enhancement of knowledge about financial economics. Each year they host a conference to bring together the greatest minds in the academic finance industry.

The grants were awarded to Ashley Ding, Maggie Liu, Hossein Rad, and Dewan Rahman whom competed against thousands of PhD candidates around the world, submitting applications based on their current research projects.

Dewan’s research into insider trading and governance was selected for the PhD poster session during the conference, where he will present his research after the review.

He says that the AFA conference is a perfect opportunity for PhD students to present and receive feedback on their papers.

“For PhD students, this is an excellent platform to show your research and get feedback from world renowned academics and researchers from all over the world” said Dewan.

Maggie, who is researching ambiguity, tail risk and the earnings announcement premium, says that the conference provides her access to current and relevant research.

“It is a great opportunity for me to get to know the cutting-edge research in the finance field and therefore benefits my career substantially” she said.

Each student received significant support from UQ Business School staff during the process of applications.

Hossein, whose research topic was about the strategic commodity futures investment strategies and portfolio allocation, has great support from Professor Robert Faff and Dr Rand Low, saying that their support was central to his achievement.

“It would not have been possible without both Robert and Rand’s efforts and guidance that allowed me to progress to this point in the first place and also their time for nominating me” said Hossein.

Ashley's research is focused on environmental finance, which tries to examine the economic risks in the fossil fuels and clean energy markets and implications of climate change on fossil fuels and clean energy investment from various aspects.

"The main idea behind it is to put the science in an economic context to increase awareness of climate change," she said.

The UQ Business School greatly supports their PhD students, encouraging them to present their efforts to their fields, says Dr Rand Low.

“We’re proud to support our PhD students to present and showcase their work to the finest academic minds in finance. Being awarded these travel grants is a strong indicator of the quality of their research thesis, and what our PhD students can achieve on a global platform” said Dr Rand Low.

The students will be attending the conference on January 5 -7 in Philadelphia, USA.

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