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Devin Shanthikumar, an associate professor of accounting, was selected as a top 40 under 40 MBA professor by Poets&Quants.

The 39-year-old professor has more than 1,100 citations on Google Scholar and received nearly 80 nominations for the Poets&Quants award.

"She is an excellent communicator, an impressive scholar and just an overall wonderful person," said one nominator. "She communicates complicated (and often dry) concepts (such as cost accounting, ABC costing, etc) in a manner that is extremely educational but also very interesting and fun."

As an accounting professor, Shanthikumar hopes to change the perception of accounting as a dry subject, and to help business leaders understand the ways they need to incorporate rigorous analysis into decision making.

"Companies need to focus more on what we call “Analytical Decision Making” here at UCI – really thinking decisions through, using data in a smart way to help inform the decision, but not letting the data drive everything," Shanthikumar said. "Many companies still do not do basic analysis to inform their decision-making, and others use incredibly complex analysis without actually understanding it, and without understanding the weaknesses of it."

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