School of Finance

Associate Professor Dr Akhtar's research interests are broad, and include: Governance, ESG, AI/ML, Financial and Cyber-crime, Corporate Finance (Share market and Bond market), Multinationals, Tax, M&A, International Finance, Innovation, Superannuation/Pension systems, Banking, Risk Management, Behavioural Finance, Cross-Cultural & Indigenous Studies, Islamic Finance and Higher Education. Her research publications have appeared in leading international and local journals. Dr Akhtar has received a number of competitive external research grants, with total funding in excess of 1.7 million dollars. She was a recipient of an ARC DECRA Fellowship. Her research has been acknowledged by the Australian-US Fulbright and Oxford Fellowship. Her research has been instrumental in policy and regulatory space especially in Bond, Tax and international trade. She has been invited several times by the Australian Federal Parliament to serve as Expert Witness on critical local and international policy matters. She is an active researcher and presents her work regularly at international and Australian conferences including the American Finance Association Conference. A number of her research papers received local and international prestigious awards. She has engaged in invited research visits to several top US Universities, including Harvard, MIT and Stanford among others.

Dr Akhtar has a broad teaching portfolio encompassing both undergraduate and postgraduate courses. She also supervises Honours, Masters and PhD students. She has been awarded the Vice-Chancellor's Award for Teaching Excellence and also the "Top Supervisor" Award.

Dr Angelo Aspris (BCom (Hons) Phd Sydney)  is an Assistant Professor (Senior Lecturer) at the University of Sydney.

He is recognised as a leading authority at the intersection of financial market architecture, corporate strategy, and the emerging frontier of digital assets. His extensive body of research provides critical insights into the mechanics of capital markets, examining the forces that shape liquidity, efficiency, and fairness. His work extends from the core of traditional equity and fixed-income markets to pioneering analyses of cryptocurrency exchanges and Decentralised Finance (DeFi). This intellectual agenda is complemented by a distinguished teaching portfolio in Financial Valuation and Management, where he translates complex financial theory into applied, actionable knowledge for undergraduate, postgraduate students, and MBA candidates. As a respected research supervisor and public commentator, Dr. Aspris is a pivotal voice in shaping both the future of finance and the next generation of its leaders.

Dr Aspris has published over 15-internationally peer-reviewed articles and recieved multiple external grants. He is a respected research degree supervisor having overseen 4 PhD, 1 Master of Philosophy, and over 20 honours graduate theses. 

Emanuela Benincasa joined The University of Sydney Business School as an Assistant Professor (Lecturer) in Finance in 2025. Her research focuses on questions in banking and corporate finance, with topics primarily in environmental, social, and climate finance. She received her PhD in Finance from the Swiss Finance Institute and the University of Zurich. 

BFin (Hons), PhD (ANU), FHEA

Hedda Cui holds a PhD in Finance from the Australian National University and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). She has extensive teaching experience across undergraduate and postgraduate levels, with research interests in corporate governance, behavioural finance, banking, and gender.

Dr Wei Cui commenced as a lecturer of finance at the University of Sydney in 2019. He received his PhD in Finance from the University of Sydney and he holds a Master of Economics and a Bachelor of Economics from Ocean University of China. His research interests are in the broad area of asset pricing with a special focus on modelling hedge fund returns. Before he joined the University of Sydney, Wei has served at a number of reputable universities in Australia with a teaching focus on corporate finance and financial accounting.

Associate Professor Quan Gan holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science and Technology from Tsinghua University, a Master of Advanced Studies in Quantitative Finance from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) and the University of Zurich, and a PhD in Economics from the University of New South Wales (UNSW).

Dr Gan currently serves as Associate Professor of Finance at the University of Sydney Business School and previously served as Head of the Finance Discipline (2025–2026), where he led the discipline through a major organisational transition to a school-level structure. Throughout his academic career, he has held a wide range of leadership responsibilities spanning strategic planning, accreditation, academic program design and implementation, budgeting and resource allocation,

workforce planning, leadership succession, faculty talent development and promotion, policy and compliance oversight, international grants review, stakeholder engagement and industry sponsorships. He has also played an active role in student experience, co-curricular engagement, and global employability initiatives.

Dr Gan has published in leading journals including the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Journal of Applied Econometrics, Quantitative Finance, and Real Estate Economics. His research has received numerous accolades, including the FMA Asia Best Paper Award and AFAANZ Best Paper Award in 2025. His expertise and commentary have been featured in major media outlets including The Australian, Australian Financial Review, SBS, and ABC.

His leadership contributions have been recognised through numerous awards, including the Student Life Enhancement Award, consecutive teaching awards, competitive university, national and international grants supporting strategic educational innovation and research excellence. 

He has successfully attracted and managed multiple industry-sponsored research grants, strengthening strategic partnerships between the University and industry stakeholders.

Prior to entering academia, Dr Gan held professional positions in the technology sector in Silicon Valley, USA, and in the financial industry in Zurich, Switzerland. These experiences, combined with his academic career, have provided him with a global perspective on innovation, finance, industry engagement, and higher education leadership.

Andrew is an Associate Professor in the Discipline of Finance. His main areas of expertise are behavioural finance, individual investor decision making, and betting markets, focusing on preference and belief-based asset allocation and asset pricing decisions, including developing models of asset allocation and optimal investor behaviour in betting markets. Other broad dimensions of his research explore the interaction of individual investors with financial institutions, and how their behaviour may be predicted based on numerical scores or past performance, and what anchors drive individual investors to the marketplace. He has also been engaged with industry, with studies of alternative finance and marketplace lending in the Asia-Pacific.

Andrew is also an elected member of the Business School’s alumni executive committee, helping to organise events and engage with local and international alumni, connecting current students with former students. He has supervised a number of research students and received multiple awards for teaching. He has appeared as a guest commentator in print, radio, and on television, discussing issues such as gambling market and banking regulation, personal savings and asset allocation model evaluation.

Iftekhar Hasan is a fractional professor within the Discipline for Finance. He is also the E. Gerald Corrigan Chair in International Business and Finance at Gabelli School of Business and co-director of the Center for Research in Contemporary Finance at Fordham university in New York, USA. Professor Hasan serves as the scientific advisor at the Central Bank of Finland. He is the managing editor of the Journal of Financial Stability.

Professor Hasan's research interests are in the areas of financial institutions, corporate finance, capital markets and emerging economies. Professor Hasan has more than 325 publications in print, including 16 books and edited volumes, and more than 225 peer-reviewed articles in finance, economics, accounting, and management journals such as JFE, JFQA, JoB, JME, RoF, JFI, JMCB, JCF, FM, JEF, JIMF, JBF, SMJ, HRM, BJM, RP, JAR, CAR, JAPP, JAAF, MS, EJOR, and JMIS.
Professor Hasan has presented his research at more than 550 professional meetings and institutions worldwide and has been a consultant or a visiting scholar for numerous international organizations, including the World Bank, the IMF, the United Nations, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, the Office of the Comptroller of Currency of the U.S. Treasury, the Banque de France, Development Bank of Japan, and the Italian Deposit Insurance Corporation. Professor Hasan has been serving as a research fellow at the Financial Institution Center at the Wharton School and a visiting fellow at the Finance Department of the NYU Stern School of Business and Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH), Germany. He is a Fulbright Scholar and holds an honorary PhD from the Romanian-American University in Bucharest.

Professor Hasan has held visiting faculty positions at several American and European universities, including the University of Rome, Italy; the University of Strasbourg, France; the University of Carlos III, Madrid; EPFL at Lausanne, Switzerland; the University of Limoges, France; National Taiwan University at Taipei; the University of Romania at Bucharest; University of Twente, Netherlands, and NYU's Stern School of Business. He received his BSS degree from University of Dhaka and MA and PhD from University of Houston.

Guanglian Hu is the Deputy Head of Discipline (Research) and a Senior Lecturer in Finance at the University of Sydney Business School. His research focuses on asset pricing and derivatives. Topics include determinants of expected option returns, variance risk premium, VIX derivatives, consumption-based asset pricing,and stochastic discount factor. He has presented his research at major academic conferences such as the SFS Finance Cavalcade. Before joining the University of Sydney, Hu worked as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Finance at ITAM and Pacific Lutheran University, where he taught courses in the undergraduate and graduate programs. He received his B.S. in Economics from Xiamen University in 2009, his M.A. in Economics from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2010 and his Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Houston in 2017.

BCom Well; MCom Sydney; MPhil Sydney; PhD Sydney; FHEA; FRM

He (Fred) Huang joined the University of Sydney Business School in 2021. He obtained his Doctor of Philosophy, Master of Philosophy and Master of Commerce (Quantitative Finance and Banking) from the University of Sydney, and his Bachelor of Commerce and Administration (Accounting and Finance) from the Victoria University of Wellington. His research interests include corporate finance, financial regulation, and credit ratings. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA) and a Financial Risk Manager (FRM) charterholder. 

George is a Lecturer (Education-Focused) in the Discipline of Finance at the University of Sydney.

George's research interests encompass the banking sector and the market microstructure of the over-the-counter (OTC) mechanisms used in fixed income, repurchase agreement ('repo') and derivative markets. His current research conducts an empirical study on the international transmission of funding shocks by global banks via their bond holdings. A second current study investigates how dealer banks use rehypothecated collateral as a funding mechanism via repo haircuts.

In George's prior work, he researched the effect of trading relationships between dealers and clients on execution costs in OTC markets. George has also researched the role of retail traders, institutional traders and market makers in the Australian options market. This research has been published in a number of international peer-reviewed journals.

George is also an alumnus of the University of Sydney, graduating with First Class Honours in 2012 and earning his PhD in 2018.

Dr Danielle Kent is a Sydney Horizon Fellow in the Discipline of Finance at the University of Sydney Business School. She holds a prestigious Horizon Fellowship on reframing climate transition decisions. Her research has been published in highly regarded journals including Scientific Reports Nature and Management Science.

Dr Kent is an expert in behavioural finance and economics, with a deep understanding of the factors driving groups of people to make certain economic and financial decisions. She has worked closely with government and major Australian banks to inform policy and provide insights into investment behaviour.

Having completed a PhD in economics at the University of Sydney, Dr Kent worked as a behavioural economist for The World Bank, where she conducted randomised controlled trials in Papua New Guinea. Danielle also has a degree in molecular biology and has taught neuroscience in the Sydney medical school.

She served as principal behavioural economics advisor to the Department Premier Cabinet, NSW Government, and worked in management consulting before returning to academia.

At the University of Sydney, Dr Kent is applying behavioural finance theory to create innovative solutions for increasing investment in institutional policies and governance around sustainability.

BEc Macq; MEc(Hon) PhD Sydney

Suk-Joong Kim is Professor of International Finance and Banking at the Discipline of Finance, the University of Sydney Business School. He joined the School in July 2010 and served in several roles, including Head of Discipline of Finance. Prior to joining the University of Sydney, he held several positions at the School of Banking and Finance, the University of New South Wales.

Suk-Joong’s research contributions have focused on foreign exchange markets, international capital flows and market integration, international banking, and sovereign credit ratings, among others. He has published in leading academic outlets, including the Journal of Corporate Finance, the Journal of Banking and Finance, the Journal of International Money and Finance, the Journal of Financial Research, and the Journal of Futures Markets. He is scheduled to be Editor-in-Chief of Finance Research Letters from July 2026. He is currently on the editorial boards of the following Elsevier journals: Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, International Review of Financial Analysis, and Research in International Business and Finance. 

BEc(Hons) PhD Penn.

Dr Tro Kortian has a PhD in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA, specialising in the fields of Finance and International Economics. He joined the University after a six-year tenure as a research economist with Reserve Bank of Australia, working in both the International and Economic Research Departments of the Bank. Prior to his return to Australia and engagement at the RBA, Dr Kortian was an Assistant Professor in Economics at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA. 
Dr Kortian has taught and coordinated a large range of courses at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels whilst in the Finance Discipline of the Business School of the University of Sydney. These include courses in Corporate Finance, International Financial Management, International Business Finance, Derivative Securities, Financial Econometrics, and Global Supervision and Regulation of Banks.  For the last several years he had been the Unit of Study coordinator for the undergraduate Finance Capstone unit FINC3600 Finance in Practice.

Dr. Doowon Lee joined the University of Sydney Business School in 2022. He holds a PhD in Finance from the KAIST Business School. Prior to perusing an academic career, he has worked as a business analyst and consultant in the finance industry. He has been involved in various projects as chief investigator funded by financial organisations such as the Korea Exchange Co. (KRX), Korea Banking Institute, and the National Pension Service of Korea.

Answering real-word questions

The world of finance has so much to offer. With new innovations in the finance industry, backed by millions and trillions of financial data, there is abundant number of questions that are yet to be answered. Doowon specializes in financial econometrics and predictive analytics and is answering some of these questions. He has contributed to areas of corporate finance, corporate governance, executive compensation, loan markets. His new interests include social capital and board structures. He loves to share his research interest with people around him. With more than a dozen successful PhD supervision he has been acknowledged as a dedicated supervisor by being awarded the 2019 Research Award for PhD supervision by the University of Newcastle. Personally, he has published several ABDC A*/A rank including a paper published in Contemporary Accounting Research, which is listed in the Financial Times' Top 50 Journals list (FT50). As of 2026, he has an overall Scholar Google citation score of 1877 and a H-index of 11. He has strong skills in quantitative methods in finance using programs such as Matlab, SAS, and Visual Basic using Excel, C++, R, SPSS, STATA, and E-views.

Excellence in Teaching

Doowon has been involved in both advanced capstone courses but also in introductory courses that provide a strong foundation for students studying in finance. Prior to his academic career in Australia, he taught financial institutions management at Sogang University in Korea and also designed and taught a course in financial modelling for the Korea Banking Institute. The financial modelling course was a core component of an executive education programs for traders, managers, and analysts from the top 10 banks in Korea. The course focused on how to use quantitative and computational finance methods in the financial markets. He has experience in teaching undergraduate courses and postgraduate courses such as corporate finance, derivatives, risk management, business statistics, international finance, and portfolio management. For his contribution to student learning as an innovative educator, he has won the faculty learning and teaching excellence award in 2019 and the University of Newcastle Teaching Excellence award in 2020.

Leadership in making change

He currently holds the role of Academic Director - Curriculum Strategy for the Discipline of Finance as the University of Sydney Business school.

Prior to joining University of Sydney, he held key faculty and school executive positions and led innovation and implement changes in various programs within business schools. Below is a list of the key positions he has previously held.

• Program convenor: Bachelor of Business Analytics (2020, interim), Bachelor of Commerce program (2016), Master of Applied Finance program (2011-2018)
• Executive governance roles: Accreditation Director (2021-2022), Assistant Dean International - Program and Strategy (2019~2020), Director of PG business studies (2018-2019)
• Teaching leadership roles: Deputy Head of School - Learning and Teaching (2018), Acting Assistant Dean - Learning and Teaching (2019), Head of Discipline - Accounting and Finance (2022)
• External engagement roles: Lead Academic for the Greater Bank Financial Literacy Programs and Finance Lab

Haekwon commenced as a lecturer of finance at the University of Sydney in 2018. His research focuses on institutions, lending, and capital structure.

Haekwon received his PhD in Finance from the University at Buffalo. He holds a Master of Arts in Economics and a Bachelor of Arts in International Trade from Kyung Hee University.

Henry Leung worked as a senior analyst at BT Financial Group, Deutsche Bank and Commonwealth Securities before joining the University. In the process, he has gained extensive knowledge and practical experience in the engineering of large scale trading and dealing systems covering foreign exchange, equities, fixed income and derivatives products. He graduated from the University with first class honours in Electrical Engineering and Commerce (major in finance and economics) and successively completed a Masters of Business in Finance at the University of Technology, Sydney. Henry was a recipient of the Faculty of Economics and Business Research Scholarship.

He has published in top tier finance journals such as Review of Finance, the Journal of Corporate Finance, the Journal of Banking and Finance, Economic Modelling, the Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, the Australian Journal of Management and the International Review of Economics and Finance. His publication "Unequal access to analyst research" (Australian Journal of Management August 2013) won the runner up E. Yetton Prize, which was inaugurated in December 1994 to celebrate the winning article published in the Journal in the previous year that, in the eyes of the Associate Editors, was of exceptional quality and was likely to have a substantial impact in the field of management research.

He serves as a committee member of theTSAFRG(Time Series and Forecasting Research Group) and theMMRG(Market Microstructure Research Group). He is a reviewer of the Australian Journal of Management, Bulletin of Economic Research, Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, International Journal of Emerging Markets, Journal of Asset Management, The Service Industries Journal, and the International Review of Financial Analysis Journal.

Lantian received a PhD in Finance from the Naveen Jindal School of Management at the University of Texas at Dallas. He earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and a Master of Science in Finance from the University of Hong Kong. His research interests include banking, corporate finance, executive compensation, institutional investors, financial intermediation, and securitization. His work has been presented at various finance and accounting conferences, including the European Finance Association Meetings, the Northern Finance Association Meetings, the Fixed Income Conference, and the MIT Asia Conference in Accounting.

Dr. Ya (Daisy) Liu is an accomplished and award-winning academic at the University of Sydney, specializing in Finance with a strong interdisciplinary focus on machine learning, corporate culture, and strategic alliances. Her distinguished academic journey, which includes a Ph.D. in Finance and a University of Sydney Prize for her ongoing Graduate Certificate in Educational Studies, is complemented by a robust research portfolio evidenced by high-impact publications, numerous conference presentations, and prestigious awards like the 2020 FIRN Spencer Martin Best Paper Award. As an Associate Lecturer, Dr. Liu demonstrates a profound commitment to pedagogical innovation, effectively managing teaching teams, integrating AI chat agents and machine learning techniques into her curriculum, and consistently receiving outstanding student feedback across a wide range of finance units. Her professional profile is further elevated by her Advance HE Fellowship (FHEA), her role in upholding academic integrity, and her significant contributions to curriculum development, establishing her as a leading educator and a prolific researcher who seamlessly bridges theoretical finance with cutting-edge technological applications.

Danilo has background in finance and economics, having earned his PhD in Economics from the University of Southern California. Prior to embarking on an academic career, Danilo worked as a risk analyst for an asset management firm in Brazil and as a consultant in multiple government projects. Danilo has extensive teaching experience at both the graduate and undergraduate levels and had his research published in the International Review of Economics and Finance and Journal of Financial Economic Policy. Danilo presented his work at a variety of institutions including the Bank of Canada, Bank of Mexico and the Brazilian Central Bank, among others.

Andre Lot has been a Lecturer of Finance at the University of Sydney Business School since January 2024. Prior to that, he was a Research Scholar at the Norwegian School of Economics. His mains research interests are household finance and individual financial decision-making.

MBA (Finance), MEd, Grad Cert T&L, BSc, FHEA

Duc Huy Truong is a lecturer (A) in the Discipline of Finance at the University of Sydney Business School.

Prior to joining the University of Sydney, Duc Huy Truong was a lecturer in finance at RMIT University from 2011-2020. Duc Huy Truong had experience working in the SME business management advisory services with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and in sales and trading with Horizon Capital Adviser in equity markets in Vietnam.

Duc Huy Truong holds a Bachelor of Science (English language study) from Hue University of Sciences and a Master of Business Administration (Finance) from the International University of Japan and University of Virginia Darden School of Business. Duc Huy Truong also has a Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Teaching and Learning and a Master of Education from RMIT University and currently is a fellow of the UK AdvancedHE higher education association (FHEA).

Dr. Hamish Malloch commenced as a lecturer at the University of Sydney in 2009 and received his PhD from the same institution in 2011. Hamish's PhD involved the valuation of exotic options called "passport options" and this work has subsequently been published in the high quality international journal Quantitative Finance. Hamish's research interests lie in the field of mathematical/quantitative finance. Specifically, he is interested in theoretical models of derivative valuation and asset allocation and the empirical application of such models.