Top Finance Graduate Award at HEC Paris

HEC Paris is proud to host the 2023 Top Finance Graduate Award Conference on 9 May 2023. This award recognizes the most promising PhD candidates in financial economics worldwide, graduating in 2023. The scientific committee selects the candidates with the greatest promise to have a long-term impact on our understanding of finance, regardless of their field of study. This award is the successor to the AQR Top Finance Graduate Award, hosted between 2013 and 2022 at Copenhagen Business School.

Congratulations to the six winners of 2023:

Menaka V. Hampole: PhD Candidate in Finance at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University
Max Miller: PhD Candidate in Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Indira Puri: PhD Candidate in Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Nishant Vats (Nish): PhD Candidate in Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business
Philippe van der Beck: PhD Candidate at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and the Swiss Finance Institute
Lulu Wang: PhD Candidate in Finance at the Stanford Graduate School of Business

Menaka V. Hampole

Menaka V. Hampole is a Ph.D. candidate in the Finance department at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.  She studies research questions at the intersection of Household Finance and Labor Economics. Prior to coming to Northwestern, she received a Master's degree in Economics from University College London and a Bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Chicago.

Max Miller

Max Miller is a PhD Candidate in Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He will join the Harvard Business School as an Assistant Professor of Finance in the summer of 2023. His research lies at the intersection of finance, macroeconomics, and political economy, aiming to combine insights from asset pricing to improve our understanding of public policy and political institutions. Prior to his PhD program at Wharton, Max worked as a research assistant at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and earned his BBA from Emory University's Goizueta Business School.

Indira Puri

Indira Puri is a PhD Candidate at MIT. Her research focuses on simplicity in financial markets and draws on tools from a variety of disciplines including behavioral finance, economic theory, computer science, and experimental methodology. Prior to MIT, she earned a masters degree in computer science from Stanford University,where she also served as Graduate Co-Chair of Stanford Women in CS. Indira is also a Paul and Daisy Soros Scholar and an NSF Graduate Fellowship recipient.

Nishant Vats (Nish)

Nishant Vats (Nish)is a PhD candidate in Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He has an undergraduate degree in Architecture from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur and has previously worked in the research wing of the Reserve Bank of India. He works on topics in finance and development, financial intermediation, and corporate finance with an emphasis on understanding credit demand. Nish will be joining the Olin Business School as an Assistant Professor in Finance in July 2023.

Philippe van der Beck

Philippe van der Beck is a PhD Student at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and the Swiss Finance Institute. His research lies at the intersection of empirical and theoretical asset pricing with a focus on demand-based asset pricing and the inelasticity of financial markets. He will be joining Harvard Business School as an Assistant Professor of Finance in July 2023.

Lulu Wang

Lulu Wang is a PhD candidate in Finance at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. His research interests include household finance, industrial organization, and corporate finance. Prior to getting his PhD, he worked for two years on the global equities team at Bridgewater Associates. He received a BS in Mathematics and Economics from the University of Michigan. Lulu will join the finance department at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

The winners will share a cash prize of 10.000 USD and present their research at HEC Paris on May 9, 2023.
 
Selection procedure: The selection committee and all previous winners of the Top Finance Graduate Award were invited to nominate candidates for the award. The committee discussed individually all the nominees and made a final selection of six winners. Note that candidates cannot apply for this award.

Award Selection Committee:

•    Jean-Edouard Colliard (co-chair), HEC Paris
•    Steven Kaplan, University of Chicago Booth School of Business
•    Augustin Landier (co-chair), HEC Paris
•    Toby Moskowitz, Yale University, School of Management
•    Anna Pavlova, London Business School
•    Lasse H. Pedersen, Copenhagen Business School
•    Michael R. Roberts, University of Pennsylvania, The Wharton School
•    David S. Scharfstein, Harvard Business School

Registration is by invitation only. Please write to colliard@hec.fr if you would like to attend this event. The detailed program is available here