Academic Research PhD Graduates’ Profiles & Placements

SMU’s first PhD programme was launched in 2006 and we had our first graduate in 2011. Till-date, we have over 200 academic research PhD graduates who have secured good placements at prestigious international academic institutions and industry organisations.

Our graduates have successfully found placements as faculty members and academic researchers (in universities and the industry) around the world. Several academic institutions our graduates have joined include Bocconi University, Carnegie Mellon University (USA), Chinese University of Hong Kong, Peking University and Tilburg University. Several industry organisations where our graduates have been appointed to include A*STAR (Singapore), DSO National Laboratories (Singapore), Google Switzerland GmbH and Twitter, Inc. (USA). Our graduates have indeed been successful in advancing their careers. You can view details of SMU’s PhD graduates’ placements.

TRUONG Quang Hai

SMU PhD in Computer Science, 2024

Research Interests
Indoor localization, Multi-sensor fusion, Optimization

Dissertation
IMPROVING THE PERFORMANCE OF WI-FI INDOOR LOCALIZATION IN BOTH DENSE AND UNKNOWN ENVIRONMENTS

Committee Members
Associate Professor Rajesh Krishna BALAN (Chair/Supervisor), SCIS, SMU
Professor Archan MISRA, SCIS, SMU
Associate Professor Lingxiao JIANG, SCIS, SMU
Associate Professor JeongGil KO, College of Engineering, Yonsei University
Dennis LIM Guo Wei

SMU PhD in Economics, 2024

Research Interests
Econometrics, Econometric Theory

Dissertation
Essays on Weak Identification

Committee Members
Associate Professor Yichong ZHANG (Chair/Supervisor), SOE, SMU
Professor Jun YU, SOE, SMU
Assistant Professor Jia LI, SOE, SMU
Assistant Professor Wenjie WANG, Nanyang Technological University
Dulanga K. W. WEERAKOON MUDIYANSELAGE

SMU PhD in Computer Science, 2024

Research Interests
Human-AI Collaboration, Pervasive Systems, Multi-Modal Processing

Dissertation
Enabling and Optimizing Multi-Modal Sense-Making for Human-AI Interaction Tasks

Committee Members
Professor Archan MISRA (Chair/Supervisor), SCIS, SMU
Assistant Professor Kotaro HARA, SCIS, SMU
Professor Jing JIANG, SCIS, SMU
Engineering Manager Nairan ZHANG, Amazon
Research Fellow Vigneshwaran SUBBARAJU, A*STAR
GOKARN Ila Nitin

SMU PhD in Computer Science, 2024

Research Interests
Machine Visual Perception, Pervasive Sensing and Systems, Neuromorphic Vision, Event Cameras, Robotic Vision, Edge Computing, Computer Vision

Dissertation
Enabling Criticality-Aware Optimized Machine Perception at the Edge

Committee Members
Vice Provost Archan MISRA (Chair/Supervisor), SCIS, SMU
Assistant Professor Dong MA, SCIS, SMU
Professor David LO, SCIS, SMU
Professor Tarek ABDELZAHER, University of Illonois at Urbana Champaign
HUANG Ying-Chi

SMU PhD in Accounting, 2024

Research Interests
Research interests: capital markets research, voluntary disclosure, ESG disclosure, and information dissemination channels

Dissertation
The Effect of Mandatory ESG Disclosure on Firm’s Going Private Decision

Committee Members
Associate Professor Holly YANG (Chair/Supervisor), SOA, SMU
Associate Professor Chih-Ying CHEN, SOA, SMU
Associate Professor Young Jun CHO, SOA, SMU
Professor of Law Pasha HSIEH, School of Law
LI Qiyuan

SMU PhD in Economics, 2024

Research Interests
Econometrics, Econometric Theory

Dissertation
Essays on High-Frequency Financial Econometrics

Committee Members
Assistant Professor Jia LI (Chair/Supervisor), SOE, SMU
Professor Jun YU, SOE, SMU
Professor Peter PHILLIPS, SOE, SMU
Professor Tim BOLLERSLEV, Duke University
LI Shuo

SMU PhD in Accounting, 2024

Research Interests
Financial reporting and corporate disclosure, Human capital issues in accounting

Dissertation
Accounting Function Hierarchies and Financial Reporting Quality

Committee Members
Associate Professor Rencheng WANG (Chair/Supervisor), SOA, SMU
Deputy Dean Liandong ZHANG, SOA, SMU
Professor Hong ZHANG, LKCSB, SMU
Associate Professor Sterling HUANG, SOA, SMU
NGUYEN Duy Tai

SMU PhD in Computer Science, 2024

Research Interests
Smart Contract Security Formal Verification Software Engineering

Dissertation
Towards Securing Smart Contracts Systematically

Committee Members
Professor Jun SUN (Chair/Supervisor), SCIS, SMU
Associate Professor Lingxiao JIANG, SCIS, SMU
Associate Professor David LO, SCIS, SMU
Assistant Professor Yi LI, School of Computer Science and Engineering
Nilotpal JHA

SMU PhD in Business, 2024

Research Interests
Workplace relationships, Relational Mindfulness, Relational Heuristics, Socioeconomic status, Diversity and Inclusion, Culture

Dissertation
Social distance in workplace relationships and its impact on employee wellbeing

Committee Members
Professor Jochen REB (Chair/Supervisor), LKCSB, SMU
Associate Professor Michael SCHAERER, LKCSB, SMU
Assistant Professor Jared NAI, LKCSB, SMU
Assistant Professor Kenneth TAN, SOSS, SMU
WANG Lei

SMU PhD in Computer Science, 2024

Research Interests
Large Language Models, Sequential Recommendations

Dissertation
Sequential Recommendation: From Representation Learning to Reasoning

Committee Members
Professor Ee-Peng LIM (Chair/Supervisor), SCIS, SMU
Associate Professor Hady Wirawan LAUW, SCIS, SMU
Assistant Professor of Computer Science Yong WANG, NTU
Assistant Professor Kwan Hui LIM, SUTD
WANG Luying

SMU PhD in Business, 2024

Research Interests
Workplace relationships, Relational Mindfulness, Relational Heuristics, Socioeconomic status, Diversity and Inclusion, Culture

Dissertation
Essays on empirical asset pricing

Committee Members
Associate Professor Jun TU (Chair/Supervisor), LKCSB, SMU
Associate Professor Sterling HUANG, SOA, SMU
Associate Professor Dashan HUANG, SOA, SMU
Professor Hong ZHANG, LKCSB, SMU
YANG Mengjie

SMU PhD in Accounting, 2024

Research Interests
Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), Sustainability Reporting, Corporate Disclosure

Dissertation
When I Know Your Taste: Retail Customers’ Environmental Preferences and Firm Pollution

Committee Members
Dean Qiang CHENG (Chair/Supervisor), SOA SMU
Associate Professor Yun LOU, SOA, SMU
Associate Professor Holly YANG, SOA, SMU
Assistant Professor Aaron Yoon, Kellogg School of Management
ZHANG Andi

SMU PhD in Accounting, 2024

Research Interests
Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) Corporate Disclosure Sustainability

Dissertation
When Market Forces Backfire: Mandatory ESG Disclosure and Corporate Innovation

Committee Members
Deputy Dean Liandong ZHANG (Chair/Supervisor), SOA, SMU
Assistant Professor Grace FAN, SOA, SMU
Assistant Professor Tianhao YAO, LKCSB, SMU
Associate Professor Yun LOU, SOA, SMU
ZHANG Hao

SMU PhD in Computer Science, 2024

Research Interests
Consumer Behaviors Analytics; Recommender Systems; Product Pricing

Dissertation
Recommender system design and multi-channel pricing: Personalization strategies for online platforms

Committee Members
Associate Professor Dan MA (Chair/Supervisor), SCIS, SMU
Assistant Professor Nan HU, SCIS, SMU
Assistant Professor Ping Fan KE, SCIS, SMU
Assistant Professor Dandan QIAO, School of Computing, NUS
Professor Zhiling GUO, University of Texas
ZHANG Ting

SMU PhD in Computer Science, 2024

Research Interests
Bug Report Management, AI for Software Engineering, Software Analytics

Dissertation
Supporting Software Engineers with Large Language Model-Based Automation

Committee Members
Professor David LO (Chair/Supervisor), SCIS, SMU
Professor Jing JIANG, SCIS, SMU
Professor Lingxiao JIANG, SCIS, SMU
Professor Alexander SEREBRENIK, Eindhoven University of Technology
CAO Rui

SMU PhD in Computer Science, 2027

Research Interests
Hateful meme detection, Visual question answering, vision-language understanding

Dissertation
Using Pre-trained Models for Vision-Language Understanding Tasks

Committee Members
Professor Jing JIANG (Chair/Supervisor), SCIS, SMU
Assistant Professor Wei GAO, SCIS, SMU
Professor Chong Wah NGO, SCIS, SMU
Assistant Professor Roy Ka-Wei LEE, Design & Artificial Intelligence Programme, SUTD
CHEN Zhaozheng

SMU PhD in Computer Science, 2027

Research Interests
weakly-supervised learning, semantic segmentation, vision-language models

Dissertation
Weakly-Supervised Semantic Segmentation

Committee Members
Assistant Professor Qianru SUN (Chair/Supervisor), SCIS, SMU
Professor Ee-Peng LIM, SCIS, SMU
Professor Jing JIANG SCIS, SMU
Associate Professor Guosheng LIN, School of Computer Science and Engineering, NTU
HU Naiyuan

SMU PhD in Economics, 2027

Research Interests
Spatial Economics, International Trade

Dissertation
Essays on Spatial Economics and International Trade

Committee Members
Assistant Professor Yuan MEI (Chair/Supervisor), SOE, SMU
Assistant Professor Jing LI, SOE, SMU
Assistant Professor Lin MA, SOE, SMU
Assistant Professor Kohei TAKEDA, NUS
HUANG Xincheng

SMU PhD in Economics, 2027

Research Interests
International Policy, Multinational Firms, Machine Learning

Dissertation
Essays on Foreign Trade Zones

Committee Members
Associate Professor Pao-Li CHANG (Chair/Supervisor), SOE, SMU
Assistant Professor Jianhuan XU, SOE, SMU
Assistant Professor Lin MA, SOE, SMU
Assistant Professor Tian LIN, INSEAD
ZHANG Mengdi

SMU PhD in Computer Science, 2027

Research Interests
1. AI testing 2. AI security 3. Fairness/Bias 4. ML Interpretability

Dissertation
Towards Explainable Neural Network Fairness

Committee Members
Professor Jun SUN (Chair/Supervisor), SCIS, SMU

Assistant Professor Christopher Michael POSKITT, SCIS, SMU

Associate Professor David LO, SCIS, SMU

Assistant Professor Yu HAN, School of Computer Science and Engineering, NTU