Student Directory
We welcome prospective applicants to contact our doctoral students directly should you have any questions about the application process, the Merage School PhD curriculum, educational climate, job market process or to even talk about what it is like to live in one of the best places in the United States.
Email: dennisda@uci.edu
Dennis Ahn is a PhD student in Accounting at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. He is a California-licensed Certified Public Accountant, and his professional background prior to joining the PhD program includes working as an auditor at Grant Thornton LLP in Los Angeles, CA and then as an Associate at BlackRock as part of its Alternatives group in Santa Monica, CA. Dennis’ research interests include audit quality, financial accounting and reporting, and mergers and acquisitions.
Email: haomiaoh@uci.edu
Haomiao (Holly) He is a doctoral student in Accounting at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. Her main research interest is in capital market research, especially the effect of financial and nonfinancial disclosure on market participants. She holds a Bachelor of Management degree from Renmin University and master’s degrees from Renmin University and University of Rochester.
Email: charl13@uci.edu
Charles Lee is a doctoral student in Accounting at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. His research interests mainly focus on tax planning, the implications of tax policy, and corporate investments. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Finance from the University of Notre Dame and a master’s degree in Finance from Johns Hopkins University.
Email: hxleong@uci.edu
Daniel (Hau Xiang) Leong is a PhD student in Accounting at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. He received his double degree in Accountancy and Business (Banking and Finance) in 2019 from Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Prior to his doctorate studies, Daniel worked as a deal advisory valuations associate in KPMG (Singapore). He also worked in various roles such as research, sales, investment banking, finance controls and risk.
Daniel is currently focused on his paper around the Made in America Tax Plan. He also has an interest in corporate taxation and avoidance, political lobbying, standard setting and corporate governance.
At UCI, Daniel was voted the MPAC Outstanding Teaching Assistant for 2021. Daniel also served as a teaching assistant for various classes such as advanced managerial accounting, ethics in accounting and business and intermediate accounting.
Email: yliao18@uci.edu
Yifei (Leo) Liao is a doctoral student in Accounting at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. His main research interests are debt contracting, corporate governance, and the application of machine learning in accounting and finance. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Northeastern University and master’s degrees from Shanghai Jiao University and the University of California, San Diego.
Email: qiaow4@uci.edu
Qiao (Annie) Wang is a doctoral student in Accounting at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. Her research interests are in investor behavior, financial reporting and corporate disclosure. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Nankai University and Master of Science degree from Xiamen University and University of Pittsburgh.
Email: shijunx@uci.edu
Shijun Xia is a PhD student in Accounting at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. Prior to entering the program in 2018, Shijun spent about ten years working in private industry, including five-year service as a Financial Manager and an Associate Director at a renowned architecture design company. His interests include labor economics and human capital effects in accounting, earnings informativeness, corporate disclosure, and tax.
Email: yoois@uci.edu
Il Sun Yoo is a PhD student in Accounting at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. His research interests include regulations, disclosure, and customer-supplier relationships. He received his bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Konkuk University and his master’s degree in Accounting from University of California, Irvine. Before pursuing his graduate studies, he worked in the accounting department at Hyundai Autoever (Hyundai Motors Group) located in Seoul, South Korea.
Why did you choose to pursue a PhD in your discipline of Business?
After years of study and conducting a couple of internships, I realized that accounting is not an error-free bible book. With human discretion involved, nothing stays impeccable, and different roles played by the executives, accountants, auditors, brokers and investors can further complicate the picture. That’s also how I realized that the beauty of accounting is not what it does, but how it interacts with human factors, such as behavioral theories and principal-agent problems. These help me develop a strong enthusiasm for a research career that involves a continuous quest for new findings and knowledge creation. I believe only through academic research can we best explain the complicated phenomena that every practitioner may encounter in the real world and come up with solutions to the challenges we face.
Why did you choose to come to the Merage School for a PhD?
The faculty’s research at the Merage School is highly aligned with my interests, such as earning management, the behavioral mechanisms of senior managers and tax. I will be thrilled to work with and be guided by the leading experts in their fields. Besides, I also really like the fact that students can work closely with the faculty members and choose flexible and tailored courses inside and outside UCI based on their needs.
Jacqueline's main research interests relate to capital markets, innovation, and taxation. During her free time, Jacqueline enjoys traveling, swimming, and rock music. She is also good at soft-pen calligraphy and piano.
Why did you choose to pursue a PhD in your discipline of Business?
I believe the training through the PhD program is essential to equip me with a solid foundation of becoming a productive research scholar.
Why did you choose to come to the Merage School for a PhD?
The Merage School is a premier research institution with world-class professors to collaborate with. In addition, I enjoy the sunshine, the ocean, and Hotel California by the Eagles.
My linkedin:
www.linkedin.com/in/jacquelinejialintang
Email: yichunh2@uci.edu
Adrienne He is a doctoral student in Finance at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. Her research interests include investments and empirical asset pricing. Yichun received a bachelor's degree in finance from Renmin University of China and a master’s degree in finance from University of Rochester. She previously worked at Citigroup as an equity research associate.
Email: bongk1@uci.edu
Bong Ko is a doctoral student in Finance at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. His research interests are in empirical asset pricing, stock return predictability and financial econometrics. He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Yonsei University.
Email: liy54@uci.edu
Yue Li is a doctoral student in Finance at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. His main research interest is in corporate finance, especially corporate governance and its implications on capital market. He holds a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in Economics from Peking University.
Email: thorntj1@uci.edu
Joshua Thornton is a PhD candidate in Finance at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. His primary research interests are empirical asset pricing, behavioral finance, social finance, investor decision-making, social networks, and household finance. His job market paper, “Peer Effects in Financial Expectations”, provides causal evidence that neighborhood financial expectations affect individual financial expectations. In his spare time, Joshua can be found surfing the local point break or on a bike ride with his wife and daughter.
Email: wanyiw2@uci.edu
Wanyi Wang is a doctoral student in Finance at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. Her main research interests are behavioral finance, FinTech, and the application of textual analysis in finance. Her working papers explore the asset pricing implication of partisanship during the pandemic and investigate the role of technology in cryptocurrency pricing. Wanyi has presented her papers at several conferences, including CICF, AFA poster session, etc. She won Ray Watson Fellowship, Management Fellowship, and Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award at UCI. She holds a Bachelor of Science, a Bachelor of Economics, and a Master of Economics Degree from Peking University.
Email: fuxinz@uci.edu
Fuxin Zhai is a PhD candidate majoring in Finance at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree and Master of Arts degree in Finance from Renmin University of China. He also received another Master of Arts degree in Economics from Boston College.
Fuxin’s research interest is empirical corporate finance, entrepreneur finance, innovation and Chinese economy.
Why did you choose to pursue a PhD in your discipline of Business?
I hope to understand the behavior of stock price and which factors drive the performance of companies.
Why did you choose to come to the Merage School for a PhD?
Great faculty, excellent research and the wonderful weather brought me here.
Why did you choose to pursue a PhD in your discipline of Business?
I have always been interested in behaviors of people and I found that financial markets are the best place to watch and study them.
Why did you choose to come to the Merage School for a PhD?
I was looking for faculty members who have the same interests as me. Also, the weather of southern California is perfect. I want to spend my five years in the best city.
Why did you choose to pursue a PhD in your discipline of Business?
I am pursuing a PhD in Finance as I would like to study how the information structure would change the efficiency of the financial market, and the agents’ behavior in this market.
Why did you choose to come to the Merage School for a PhD?
The faculty members at the Merage School are world-famous and doing frontier research about behavioral and information questions in finance. I believe the program at the Merage School would help me succeed in future academic research.
Email: donghwab@uci.edu
Donghwa Bae is a doctoral student in Information Systems at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. His research interests are in economics of information systems, machine learning, and textual analysis. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Korea University.
Email: fatooreh@uci.edu
Sardar Fatooreh Bonabi is a doctoral student in Information Systems at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. Sardar earned a master’s degree in Business Administration in the field of Strategy at the University of Tehran, and a bachelor’s degree in Computer Sciences at the Sharif University of Technology, the most prestigious university in Iran.
After establishing two companies, he realized there are numerous business problems that require careful and systematic examination. This experience led Sardar to apply for the PhD program at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. He entered the PhD program in January 2021 to fulfill his passion and curiosity about business and management problems, to have the opportunity to examine real-world business phenomena and to provide valuable insights/solutions to complicated managerial problems.
Sardar is interested in the intersection of computer science and management. He believes the potential power of computer science can help business extract more values, and infers that today’s trends in Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Business Intelligence, Big Data, and Text Mining can be applied to numerous management and business contexts in order to achieve this goal.
Email: zcao6@uci.edu
Ziyi Cao is a doctoral student in Information Systems at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. Her research interests include digital platforms and online reputation systems, sharing economy, AI impacts and digital health care. She received her BS in Management Information Systems from School of Information, Renmin University of China.
Email: cdeharoa@uci.edu
Cristina M. De Haro is a doctoral student in Information Systems at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. Her research focuses on how digital transformation impacts health. Additionally, she is a DECADE Student Representative and contributes to ensure inclusive excellence in graduate education at UCI. Outside of academia, she enjoys being outdoors swimming and camping.
She holds a MSc. in Economics from UCI, a MSc. in Economics and Business Administration from the Comillas Pontifical University -ICADE (Spain), a BA in Economics and a BA in Business Administration from the San Pablo CEU University (Spain).
Email: mgu3@uci.edu
Ming Gu is a doctoral student in Information Systems at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. His research interests are in social media, natural language processing, and visual content mining. He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Peking University.
Email: jinanl1@uci.edu
Jinan Lin is a PhD candidate of Information Systems at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. Previously, he obtained Master of Philosophy in Economics and a PhD in Economics from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and MA in Economics from UC Santa Barbara.
Jinan conducted research in 2019 as an Economist I (Level 4, Intern) with the Business, Technology & Solutions Team at Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) in Seattle. In 2020, he interned as a researcher at the Office of the Chief Economist of the Microsoft Corporation in Redmond. Jinan worked as an Economics & Emerging Tech Researcher (Intern) of Nokia Bell Labs and was affiliated with WeChat/Tencent entitled as Tencent Rhino-Bird Research Elite in 2021.
He studies digitization, platforms, and more broadly, economic and societal impacts of information and technology. Specifically, Jinan's research topics cover impacts and strategies of platforms, sharing economy and review systems. His industrial collaborations extend to productivity, ML-based forecasting, computable general equilibrium models of AI and platform experiment design. Jinan received the Ray Watson Fellowship and the Long US-China Institute Research Fellowship, among others. Prior to joining the Merage School, he published papers on Transportation Research Part A, and Kybernetes.
Email: jsrho@uci.edu
Elia (Jung Suk) Rho is a doctoral student in Information Systems at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. His research interests are in empirical studies on mobile application unbundling and optimal search results UI design. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Korea University and master’s degrees from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and University of Texas-Austin.
Email: jiaqis@uci.edu
Jiaqi Shi is a PhD student in Information Systems. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Quantitative Economics from the University of California, Irvine. He later received his double degree in Data Sciences & Business Analytics from ESSEC business school & CentraleSupélec engineering school.
After earning his BA from UCI, Jiaqi worked for a venture capital firm as Business Analyst. He worked as Data Scientist and Research Engineer following his graduate studies.
His current research focuses on online marketing and online platforms.
Email: haonay4@uci.edu
Haonan Yin is a doctoral student in Information Systems at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. She focuses on research in the area of electronic healthcare, especially physician service, patient behavior and the operation of online health communities. Haonan received her master’s in Management Science and Engineering from Beijing Institute of Technology and her bachelor’s in Information Systems from Qingdao University.
Email: halantar@uci.edu
Huwail Alantari is a doctoral candidate in Marketing at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Kuwait University and master’s degrees from Kuwait University and the University of Colorado Boulder.
Email: jhenry3@uci.edu
Jazmin Henry is a doctoral student in Marketing at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. Her main research interest is in consumer behavior, specifically race, class and culture in the marketplace. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Management from Fayetteville State University and a Master of Business degree from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.
Email: amking1@uci.edu
Angela King is a Marketing PhD student at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. She studies consumer behavior with a focus on issues such as food choice, health decision-making and sustainable consumption.
Email: xuanx6@uci.edu
Xuan Xie grew up in a coastal city in southern China then moved thousand miles away from home to attend a British Columbia boarding high school at a very young age. Her journey extended further to the other side of the Pacific Ocean as she sung Hail to the Orange and became a proud Illini. Xuan had tried her luck in lots of snow working in corporate America before coming to sunny California embracing herself as a future scholar at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business.
Her diverse background shapes her keen research interests in identity, social influence and cross-cultural psychology. She has presented her research projects at Association of Consumer Research conference, competed as a semi-finalist in UCI Grad Slam, and won the 1st prize in a Merage Research Fest. At the Merage School, she was elected to and recently completed two consecutive terms as VP and Social Chair for the Merage PhD Student Association. At the campus level, she serves as the VP of Social Affairs for Associated Graduate Students, is a current member on Graduate Student Advisory Board and a student representative at DECADE council. She feels privileged to have the opportunity to provide mentorship to underrepresented undergraduate students through the DECADE PLUS program and to international graduate students through the Graduate InterConnect program. Being a multi-lingual, Xuan loves an adventurous life full of journeys embracing different cultures. She is an animal lover, a huge soccer fan and an enthusiastic trivia game player.
Email: xiajingz@uci.edu
Xiajing Zhu is a doctoral student in Marketing at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degree (with honors) in Business Administration at Jiangnan University, China. She studies the effects of online misinformation, social media, message framing, self-concept and branding strategy on consumers. Her works appear in the Journal of Business Research and the International Journal of Advertising.
Why did you choose to pursue a PhD in your discipline of Business?
Since more and more interactions with customers take place in online platforms where almost all actions are logged, there is untapped potential in using data to improve marketing practices and create value for all stakeholders. I do like to explore these digital revolutions that have radically transformed our lives and marketing practices.
Why did you choose to come to (the Merage School) for a PhD?
The quality of education and the research done by faculty members are my primary reasons for choosing The Paul Merage School of Business. I am confident that the school provides me the support I need to work on exciting research projects and offer new knowledge to the Marketing discipline.
Why did you choose to pursue a PhD in your discipline of Business?
I decided to pursue a PhD degree in business because I like the application of economics theories to the business sector and aim to contribute to generating success in entrepreneurship in a practical sense.
Why did you choose to come to the Merage School for a PhD?
I chose the Merage School due to the exceptional and considerate faculty and supportive environment as well as beautiful beaches for surfing.
Why did you choose to pursue a PhD in your discipline of Business?
I chose a PhD in Marketing to do meaningful research and provide insight into power of the African American consumer marketplace.
Why did you choose to come to the Merage School for a PhD?
The Merage School offered me the path to work with world class faculty in my discipline as well access to academic and industry thought leadership to develop my research focusing on the cross-sections of Race & Money.”
Email: xianjiag@uci.edu
Xianjia Gao is a doctoral student in Operations and Decision Technologies at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. Her research interests are in sustainable operation and operation management interface finance. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of International Business and Economics and a master’s degree from Rutgers University.
Email: smhosse1@uci.edu
Mojtaba Hosseini joined The Paul Merage School of Business in 2016 as a PhD student in Operations and Decision Technologies. He holds a MSc in Industrial Engineering and Operational Management from Koc University, Turkey, and BSc in Industrial Engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Iran. Hosseini's research interests include applied optimization, large-scale optimization, supply chain management, health care analytics, matching markets, machine learning, and problems that lie at the interface of operations and data science. His research has been published in leading journals, including “Benders Decomposition for the Profit Maximizing Capacitated Hub Location Problem with Multiple Demand Classes” in Transportation Science, and “Robust-Stochastic Models for Profit Maximizing Hub Location Problems” also in Transportation Science.
Hosseini’s primary research stream addresses problems such as determining optimal hub network structures that allocate available capacities of hubs to satisfy demand for commodities from different market segments, scheduling physicians in hospitals, data-driven methods for concluding a suspended sports league, and Nash-bargaining-based models for matching markets. On the theory side, his research is mainly focused on developing general-purpose techniques for accelerating decomposition methods for large-scale optimization, which have a wide spectrum of applications ranging from supply chain management and scheduling to managerial applications such as decision-making under uncertainty and problems arising in machine learning.
Email: xlin32@uci.edu
Xi (Henry) Lin is a doctoral student in Operations and Decision Technologies at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. He is interested in devising and using tailored mathematical model to facilitate data-driven operational decision-making for newly emerged businesses. His ongoing work includes player matching for online competitive games and mixed-quality inventory allocation in subscription-based fashion rental business. He holds a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Master of Science in statistics and operations research from University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
Email: arobins3@uci.edu
Alexander (Alex) Robinson is a PhD candidate in Operations and Decision Technologies. He graduated from Bucknell University in 2017 with a BS in Mathematics. His research interests include machine learning, predictive analytics, and price optimization. Currently, he is working on demand forecasting and pricing problems in the hotel industry.
Email: awillia7@uci.edu
Amy Williams is a PhD student in Operations and Decision Technologies at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. She obtained a BA in Physics at Yeshiva University in 2010. Prior to enrolling in the PhD program, Amy worked in retail at Saks Fifth Avenue Off Fifth and Gilt as a Merchandise Planner, in tech at Fitbit as a member of the Research and Development team, and in healthcare consulting at Statistics Collaborative as Research Associate. Her main research interests are related to the retail industry, specifically around leveraging aspects of the e-commerce environment to help promote operational efficiencies and sustainable practices.
Email: qyan5@uci.edu
Qi Yan received her Bachelor of Arts degree, Magna Cum Laude, in Business Economics with Minor in Statistics and Minor in Accounting in 2016 from University of California, Los Angeles. She later received her Master of Science in Finance from Boston College Carroll School of Management in 2017. She is now attending the University of California, Irvine to pursue her Doctor of Philosophy degree in Operations and Decision Technologies.
Qi is interested in behavioral operations research. She studies the industry of live streaming and its derivative areas. She received the Long US-China Institute graduate student research grant in 2021 to support her research. Qi also seeks opportunities for experiences in the industry and enrich her research with solid background information. In 2018, she joined Meituan as an intern in the Mobike operations team and led various projects such as bike deployment in universities.
Why did you choose to pursue a PhD in your discipline of Business?
I'm interested in doing research. I have done some research such as optimizing seed portfolios, optimizing healthcare supply chains, etc. I want to continue this research by doing a PhD to learn more about this field.
In the future, I would like to be a lecturer at a university, doing research as well as sharing my knowledge to students. The primary requirement to achieve this goal is to have a PhD degree. Therefore, I want to complete my career plan by pursuing a PhD.
Why did you choose to come to the Merage School for a PhD?
The program suits my needs. It has influential faculty who have the expertise I seek in operations management. Moreover, the program successfully trains students to be excellent researchers and builds good academic career networks for students.
Why did you choose to pursue a PhD in your discipline of Business?
I am interested in research topics related to data science and operation optimization especially in logistics and transportation industries. A PhD in Operations and Decision Technologies would be a good starting point for pursuing a long-term academic career.
Why did you choose to come to the Merage School for a PhD?
The Merage School is a young but fast-growing business school with diversified and vibrant atmosphere. Students have opportunities working closely with faculty members early. This program matches my research interests, provides cross-discipline course plans, and organizes various seminar and training series to fit flexible individual development. In addition, Irvine is a perfect city to live and study with the finest weather, safest community, and the fresh coastal view.
Email: mpcao@uci.edu
Minh Cao worked as a research assistant in the field of Anthropology while studying for a bachelor’s degree in International Business at the State University of New York. She later pursued her postgraduate studies with a scholarship from the Cambridge Trust, earning an MPhil degree in Development Studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently, Minh is a PhD candidate in Organization and Management at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business.
In her research, Minh employs qualitative and ethnographic methods to explore “relationality,” that is, the work of human connections. Her studies focus on how people approach their work and occupations under the influence of their connections, relationships, and interactions with others – including colleagues, friends, family members, customers and strangers. She is currently examining the intricacies of human connections as experienced by workers in two settings: (1) a college resource center specializing in supporting undocumented students (undocumented immigrants attending college and postgraduate programs) in the United States; and (2) two companies providing professional consulting services for international students applying to colleges in English-speaking countries. For the most up-to-date information on her research, please visit her personal website.
Minh enjoys teaching and has taught a course on "Introduction to Business and Management" to undergraduate students at UCI in 2020. “Teaching undergraduate students during the COVID-19 pandemic was an invaluable experience,” says Minh. “During the process of delivering the academic content for the course, I developed empathy and compassion towards my students after seeing their struggles with isolation, disorientation and anxiety during the pandemic. It was quite touching for me to see my students strive to attend online classes and work hard to perform well during the pandemic. I’ve learned as much as from my students as they learned from me, and I am grateful for that. I’m looking forward to continuing this mutual learning experience in the future.”
Email: cjlam1@uci.edu
Chris Lam became a PhD student in Organization and Management at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business in 2020. He received a Bachelor of Business Administration from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School in 2017, concentrating in Organization and Management. After graduation, he worked as a Workday consultant at Alight Solutions for three years, leaving as a senior consultant in 2020. His current research stems from his workforce experience in Atlanta in the wake of the 2016 election, centering around the study of political minorities in the workplace at the intersection of company culture, diversity & inclusion and stigmatization.
Email: portocaf@uci.edu
Florencio Portocarrero is a PhD candidate in Organization and Management. His identity as a scholar is tied to two areas of study. On the one hand, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and business ethics; and on the other, individual differences and emotions in work life. With his work on CSR, Florencio strives to go beyond the “business case” for CSR to examine how different types of CSR can foster the critical global imperative of social and environmental sustainability. He frequently collaborates with both non-profit and for-profit organizations across the Americas to design and evaluate employee-centered CSR initiatives such as corporate volunteering programs. For example, in one of his field experiments, he designed an alternative onboarding process for employees in a large bank to examine the specific mechanisms linking employee participation in CSR to subsequent engagement in corporate volunteering programs.
With his work on individual differences and emotions, Florencio seeks to contribute to a broader understanding of organizational actors as holistic human beings whose emotions shape and are shaped by attitudes, behavior and well-being. Moreover, his work seeks to better understand the role that contexts (e.g., CSR initiatives, organizational change, entrepreneurship) play in eliciting and discrete specific emotional phenomena (e.g., gratitude, empathy). In a theory paper, Florencio and his colleague introduce the grateful exchange process (GEP), a theoretical framework on the complex nature of gratitude in dyadic workplace interactions and concurrently considers the potential for “wrong turns” within the GEP, which can prevent the emergence of gratitude and even damage workplace relationships.
Florencio has taught undergraduate courses in strategic management and introduction to management as well as graduate courses in organization development and diversity in organizations. Additionally, his expertise in applied group dynamics has led him to facilitate workshops on teamwork for undergraduate, graduate and executive students in the USA and Latin America.
Email: yuchencw@uci.edu
Carrie (Yuchen) Wang is currently a PhD candidate in Organization and Management and entering her 6th year at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. Her two main research interests focus on international talent management and knowledge transfer. For her dissertation, Carrie is studying the experiences of highly skilled professionals from the U.S. returning to their home countries in Asia to start entrepreneurship and the challenges within those circumstances. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Computation and Neural Systems at California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Prior to entering academia, she worked at City of Hope and published in the biomedical fields.
Connect with Carrie on LinkedIn
Learn more about Carrie's work on the Sea Turtles in her video below:
Email: seongbiy@uci.edu
Simon (Seongbin) Yoon is a doctoral student in Organization and Management at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. His research interest lies labor market, online platform, and entrepreneurship. He received his master's degree from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, and bachelor's degree from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.
Email: yuxuan@uci.edu
Lily (Yuxuan) Zhu is a PhD candidate in Organization and Management at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business.
Her research primarily examines organizational behavior and entrepreneurship at the micro level, and she is currently focusing on questions related to how emotions and emotion management influence pitches, creativity, and decision making. Her research won the Best Paper Award from the Academy of Management annual meeting.
Lily is also passionate about teaching. She has taught organizational behavior as part of the core curriculum for undergraduate business majors and assisted in several MBA or undergraduate courses. She won the Outstanding PhD Instructor Award for the undergraduate program at the Merage School for the 2020-2021 academic year.
Prior to graduate school, Lily earned her bachelor’s degree from Johns Hopkins University with double major in psychology and economics. She also conducted research at the Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise at the Johns Hopkins University and worked at a consulting firm in Washington D.C.
Why did you choose to pursue a PhD in your discipline of Business?
Driven to generate novel, meaningful findings that inform business practices, I decided to pursue a PhD in Organization and Management.
Why did you choose to come to the Merage School for a PhD?
I chose to pursue a PhD at the Merage School because of the outstanding faculty, the collaborative departmental culture, and the beautiful Southern California location. In my free time, I enjoy hiking, going to beach, spending time with my close friends, and practicing the "gentle art" of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Why did you choose to pursue a PhD in your discipline of Business?
I’m pursuing a PhD in Organization and Management because I want to be on the leading edge to explore how our jobs will change in the face of technological advancement.
Why did you choose to come to the Merage School for a PhD?
I chose the Merage School because having graduated from UCI, I know how the faculty welcomes interdisciplinary approaches as well as how open-minded and forward-thinking the university is in general.
Taryn Williams is a Graduate Opportunity Fellow studying Organization and Management at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. Her research interests include internal labor markets, team dynamics, and corporate social responsibility. She currently holds a bachelor's degree with a double major in Management and Operations & Supply Chain Management from California State University, Long Beach and dual associate's degrees in Business Administration and Economics from Long Beach City College.
Taryn has presented research on community pushback to farmers' markets, multiple-regression analysis of opioid overdoses in the U.S., and bias and judgment as barriers to human growth and upward mobility. Most recently, her honors thesis explored the creation of faculty development diversity training focusing on formerly incarcerated (FI) students. For her doctoral studies, she plans to investigate the experiences of FI job seekers and jobholders. Some of the questions that she wants to pursue are: How are FI turned away from higher levels of employment? Are bias, judgment, and discriminatory hiring practices impacting FI's ability to advance within an organization? Does educational attainment for FI serve as a catalyst for employment or promotion? What perspective do FI bring to teams and organizations? And how do FI mediate stigma in the workplace?
Taryn aspires to create programming and change policies in support of the FI community getting and maintaining employment, as well as help companies understand the value that FI brings to team dynamics and organizational outcomes.
Why did you choose to pursue a PhD in your discipline of Business?
During application season, I struggled between pursuing a doctorate in management or criminology. Although I could have done my research from either field, I felt my work could have a more significant impact on management. Management scholarship on diversity, equity, and inclusion lacks research on FI as a marginalized population in the labor market. I hope to change that!
Why did you choose to come to the Merage School for a PhD?
Ultimately, I decided to join the Merage School because I felt supported and celebrated from the very start. I applied to twelve programs all over the country but never had I experienced faculty reaching out to me! It made me feel like my ideas were worth pursuing and that my perspective was valuable. The Merage School has already surpassed my expectations by offering me an individualized program and one-on-one mentorship with faculty.
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taryndeannewilliams/
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=pBKlUKUAAAAJ&hl=en
Link to Research presentation (5-minute video)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZMNsM5h-XpUz-S-5MNT1Hh38ccM6bOen/view?usp=sharing
Email: cheonmok@uci.edu
John (Cheon Mok) Kim is a doctoral student in Strategy at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. His main research interests like in the area of organizational learning and behavioral theory of the firm, more specifically in the area of aspiration formation, vicarious learning, and organizational design. He received a bachelor’s degree from Macquarie University and master’s degree from Yonsei University.
Email: jeesoo.k@uci.edu
Jeesoo Kim is a doctoral student in Strategy at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. Her research lies at the intersection of cognitive and social psychology and transaction cost economics. Her work mainly examines how psychological factors affect interfirm relationships. She also conducts research on managerial cognition, capability development, and learning. Jeesoo serves as an ad-hoc reviewer for the Journal of Organization Design and Long Range Planning. She holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and business administration (double major) and a master’s degree in management from Korea University.
Email: jrmcente@uci.edu
Joseph McEntee is a doctoral student in Strategy at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. His research interests include behavioral strategy and top management teams. He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree, both in Economics, from California State University, Long Beach.
Email: jay.park@uci.edu
Jay (Jinwon) Park is a doctoral student in Strategy at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business. His research domains are concentrated on the antecedents and consequences of organizational decision-making. He is currently interested in how temporal horizons impact organization’s feedback, how feedback in user community influences community-level attention, and how changes in information communication technology impacts organizational structure. He is conducting research projects in professional sports, video gaming and healthcare industry setting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Korea University and a master’s degree from Seoul National University.
Email: anshus1@uci.edu
Anshu (Anshuman) Sinhais a PhD candidate in Strategy at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business.
His research primarily examines antecedents and moderators of organizational adaptation, with a focus on entrepreneurship. He is currently focusing on questions related to the relationships between entrepreneurial aspirations, firm performance, managerial attention, and organizational change.
Apart from research, Anshu focuses on bringing passion and energy to the classroom as a teacher. He has assisted in several MBA and undergraduate courses.
Prior to graduate school, Anshu helped established firms search for and execute change during his tenure at Mckinsey & Company, in projects across the areas of strategy, operations, M&A due diligence and product development. During this time, he also served as a leader for knowledge creation and dissemination initiatives within the firm and to clients.
Why did you choose to pursue a PhD in your discipline of Business?
I wanted to pursue a PhD in strategy because I developed my research interest during my master's research experience. I am passionate about doing research. Also, it is my dream to be a professor after graduation because there were many teachers and professors helping me through my learning journey.
Why did you choose to come to the Merage School for a PhD?
I chose the UCI Paul Merage School of Business because my research interest is very aligned with my advisor, professor Libby Weber. I hope that I can work with her more in the future.
