PhD in Business Administration

Students

Doctoral Candidates

Han Dai
Accountancy
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Han Dai is a fourth-year PhD student in the Lynn Pippenger School of Accountancy. Her general research interests include topics in auditing, financial accounting, and accounting information systems. Specifically, her research examines the effect of corporate reorganization on audit quality, the influence of executives' compensation mechanisms on firm performance and CEOs' risk-seeking behaviors, and investors' reactions to iXBRL adoption. She has taught the Principles of Financial Accounting and team-taught Federal Income Taxation and Accounting Information Systems courses. She has served as a discussant at the American Accounting Association (AAA) AIS Midyear Meeting. Prior to entering academia, she earned her MAcc from Texas Tech University and bachelor's degree from Hubei University of Economics.

Shaddy Douidar
Finance
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Currently a doctoral candidate studying finance, Shaddy Douidar also earned his Masters of Sciences in Finance at the Kate Tiedemann School of Business and Finance at USF. Previously, he earned his bachelor’s degree from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University (Bloomington). His preferred fields of research include politics in finance and payout policy. He has presented his research at conferences including the: Financial Management Association, Southern Finance Association, and Florida Finance Conference. He has taught the following courses: Principles of Finance, Personal Finance, and Fundamentals of Business Finance.

Mostafa Esmaeili
Information Systems
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Moez Farokhnia
Information Systems
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Moez Farokhnia is a PhD candidate in the Information Systems and Decision Sciences Department at USF. He holds a master's degree degree in industrial engineering from Sharif University of Technology and a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering from Iran University of Science and Technology. He also has about three years of experience as supply chain development expert and entrepreneurial activities. His principal research interests include data analytics and applications of machine learning and operations research in cyber security and health informatics. His research in cyber security domain ranges from real-time detection of suspicious activities in EMR systems using optimal ensembles of anomaly detectors to design of robust models for optimal allocations of security controls. Toreinforce his research with rigorous causal inferences, he has also conducted experimental studies on the collaboration of AI and humans in cryptocurrencies market. Farokhnia uses variety of machine learning tools, operations research methods and econometrics models in his researches. He has also presented his researches at various conferences including WITS and WCBA. He also serves as an instructor of business application development and C# programming at USF.

Jan Hanousek
Finance
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Ling Hu
Marketing

Khalia Jenkins
Marketing
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Arjun Kadian
Information Systems
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Arjun’s research focuses on IT at both the individual and organizational levels. At the individual level, he is interested in understanding consumer behavior on IT platforms. At an organizational level, his goal is to understand how organizational initiatives influence performance, productivity, and wages of IT employees. His primary methodological expertise lies in design and analysis of lab, field and natural experiments and econometric analysis of archival data. He has presented his research at premier IS conferences such as ICIS, WISE and HICSS and his dissertation essays have been accepted at AMCIS and ICIS doctoral consortiums. Arjun has taught four full semester undergraduate courses in business analytics (e.g., Business Intelligence), and cybersecurity (e.g., Information Security and IT Risk Management, Business Data Communications) in different classroom settings (face-to-face and online). In addition to teaching undergraduate courses, he also has experience in teaching business programming (R, Python, SPSS) workshops at the graduate level.

Ye Seul Kim
Marketing
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Yeseul Kim is a PhD candidate in marketing at the Muma College of Business. Before joining USF, she earned an MS and BA in Psychology from Korea University. She pursued the USF PhD program to apply what she learned in the discipline of psychology into the marketing area. Her major research topic is sensory marketing. Specifically, she investigates how visual components on websites affect online customer shopping behavior. Another stream of her research is digital marketing. She examines the effect of social media usage on users’ behavior. She teaches digital marketing at the undergraduate level.

Juliana Kralik
Accountancy
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Juliana Kralik is a doctoral candidate in the Lynn Pippenger School of Accountancy. She is interested in researching topics related to the auditing profession using qualitative and experimental methods. Specifically, her research examines the impact of the internal control over financial reporting audit on auditor judgement and decision making along with other challenges in the audit work environment and mechanisms to mitigate the challenges. Kralik also earned her bachelor’s and master’s degree in Accounting from USF. She has taught the Principles of Financial and Managerial Accounting courses as well as Accounting Information Systems. Prior to entering academia, she worked as an external auditor at EY in the Tampa Bay area and maintains an active CPA license.

Mario Marshall
Finance
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Veronika Ponomarenko
Marketing
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Samuel Sekar
Marketing
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Roohid Ahmed Syed
Information Systems
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Raul Villamil-Otero
Accountancy
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Raul Villamil-Otero is a doctoral candidate in the Lynn Pippenger School of Accountancy. His general research interests include topics in auditing and accounting information systems. Specifically, his research examines team communication’s method, frequency, and nature and their effect on audit quality. Villamil-Otero is a licensed CPA, earned an MBA from North Carolina A&T State University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagϋez Campus.

Hao Wang
Marketing
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Hao Wang is a PhD candidate in marketing at the University of South Florida (USF). His research interests focus on selling and sales management. He has interests in empirically accessing managerially oriented research on issues related to salesforce effectiveness and/or digital marketing. His paper has been conditionally accepted to the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (FT50). He has also published research in the Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management. His research has been selected as a finalist for the 2021 James M. Comer Award for the Best Contribution to Selling and Sales Management Theory. One of his dissertation essays received the Best Doctoral Paper Award at the National Conference in Sales Management 2021. He presented his research at major academic conferences such as the American Marketing Association Conference, and the Academy of Management Annual Meeting. He also taught marketing research and will teach digital marketing at USF.

Zicheng Xiao
Finance
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Gleb Zavadskiy
Information Systems
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Yimei Zhang
Accountancy
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Yimei Zhang is a doctoral candidate in the Lynn Pippenger School of Accountancy. Her research interests are in the intersection of financial/auditing and accounting information systems. Specifically, she is interested in (1) examining how auditors and capital market participants are impacted by various technology-related items, such as cybersecurity, inline XBRL, and ERP systems, and (2) analyzing textual information in financial disclosures by utilizing her unique skills, such as web scraping for innovative datasets and using machine learning as a new research method. One of her projects is being revised for resubmission at IJAIS, and another project is currently under review at JIS. Yimei has presented her papers at the AAA annual meeting and AIS midyear meeting. She has taught Accounting Information Systems and the Principles of Financial Accounting courses at USF.

Doctoral Students