Speakers

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Lukáš Vartiak, Ph.D.

Lukáš Vartiak, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, Comenius University in Bratislava

Dr. Lukáš Vartiak is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences of the Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia. Since his doctoral studies, he has been devoted to the issue of socially responsible business, business ethics, Business Excellence, which is closely related to the issue of ethics and philosophy.

Michela Giorcelli

Javier Cifuentes-Faura, Ph.D.

Researcher, Department of Financial Economics and Accounting, University of Murcia

Javier Cifuentes-Faura works in the Department of Financial Economics and Accounting at the University of Murcia (Spain). He graduated in Business Administration and Management from the University of Murcia with the Extraordinary End of Degree Award and the best grade of the promotion. He has completed postgraduate studies such as the Master in Business Administration MBA and the Master in Commercial and Marketing Management at the European Business School of Barcelona, both with Cum Laude recognition for academic excellence. He has been awarded the "Economics and Business 2018" prize by the Official Association of Economists. His lines of research include those related to public administration and economics, business, education, and those related to sustainability and environment. He is a member of the work plan of the EDINSOST2 project: Integration of sustainable development objectives in sustainability education in Spanish university degrees. He has published in JCR and Scopus impact journals, such as Educational Review, Social Indicators Research, Evaluation Review or Journal of Policy Modeling. He has participated in several international conferences, being invited to some of them as keynote speaker.

Michela Giorcelli

Gbenga Adamolekun

Assistant Professor in Edinburgh Napier University

Dr Gbenga Adamolekun is an Assistant Professor (Lecturer) in Finance at Edinburgh Napier University. Before his current position, he held similar roles at the University of Coventry. His research is largely situated in the areas of sustainable finance and corporate finance. He is interested in decoupling how corporate green transition or failure to transit affects various corporate outcomes. His work has been published in various journals including the Journal of Environmental Management, Abacus, Economics Letters, Finance Research Letters, and Management Decision Economics. He is also a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Investment and Management.

Previous Speakers

Arman Eshraghi, Ph.D.

Arman Eshraghi, Ph.D.

Professor of Finance and Chair of Finance and Investment, Cardiff Business School

Arman Eshraghi is a Professor of Finance and Chair of Finance and Investment at Cardiff Business School, UK. His academic research spans finance, accounting and psychology with interests including behavioural finance, financial technology and corporate governance. His work is published in some of the leading journals of the field, cited in the media including the Financial Times, Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, Forbes and Bloomberg, and contributed to handbooks published by Cambridge University, Wiley, Springer and Routledge. Professor Eshraghi is an Editor of International Review of Economics and Finance, Senior Editor of Finance Research Letters, Shimomura Fellow of the Development Bank of Japan, Fellow of the Centre for the Study of Decision-Making Uncertainty at UCL, Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Director of the Cardiff Fintech Research Group, and an Advisory Board Member of Fintech Wales. He has advised a number of UK fintech and investment firms in recent years.

Ben Fahimnia

Kristle Romero Cortes, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, School of Banking and Finance in the Business School, University of New South Wales

Dr. Kristle Cortés is an Associate Professor in the School of Banking and Finance in the Business School at the University of New South Wales. Her research interests include financial intermediation, empirical corporate finance, entrepreneurial finance, and the structure, optimization, and regulatory practices of the financial services industry. Dr. Cortés previously worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland where, in addition to her research, she took part in the Federal Open Market Committee process. Her work has been published in the Journal of Financial Economics, The Review of Economics and Statistics and The Review of Corporate Finance Studies. Dr. Cortés has a PhD in finance from Boston College and a BA in economics and philosophy from Northwestern University.

Chinny Nzekwe-Excel, Ph.D.

Chinny Nzekwe-Excel, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Faculty of Business, Law and Social Sciences, Birmingham City University

Dr. Chinny Nzekwe-Excel is an experienced academic with significant subject expertise in the broad areas of Management Development Initiatives & Repositioning Strategies; International Business; Leadership Concepts; Operations Management Research; Teaching & Learning Innovations; Work-based Learning; and Construction Management. She is also a Statistics Expert; a Senior Fellow of the Advance Higher Education, UK; a Certified Management & Business Educator; and a Leadership and Management Professional.

Chinny is an Associate Professor in Enterprise and Corporate Development. She is the Program Director of the Help to Grow Management, and the Program Director of the Senior Leader Apprenticeship at Birmingham City University, UK. She has strategic involvements with wider & global higher education platforms and has published well over 50 research outputs in leading academic journals & conference/ scholarly networks.

Chinny's research outputs have continued to gain wide attention and international recognition including the Highly Commended Emeralds Literati Networks award. She serves as an editor and a reviewer in several peer-reviewed journals including the Built Environment, Project & Asset Management; Innovations in Education and Teaching Journal; International Journal of Learning; Research & Development, Science Publishing Group.

Canh Thien Dang

Canh Thien Dang, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, King's College London

Dr. Dang is a Lecturer in Economics (Assistant Professor) at the Department of Economics, King's Business School, King's College London. He is also an academic supervisor at the Institute of Finance and Technology, University College of London, and a chief examiner for the University of London International Programme (Econometrics). Before joining King's, he lectured and conducted research at the London School of Economics as an LSE Fellow in Economics, and at the University of Warwick as a postdoctoral fellow (in Economics). He completed his PhD in Economics at the University of Nottingham in 2018. He uses both theory and data to answer questions at the intersection of economics and public policies. His research interests include Development Economics, Public Economics, and Applied Econometrics. His current research focuses on the economics of nonprofit organisations, financial data, public good provision (housing, security, preferential tax treatment, and public procurement), and innovation. Recently, he has published at the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and the Economic Development and Culture Change.

Canh Thien Dang

Florian Marcel Nuţă, Ph.D.

Professor Dr. Habil., Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Danubius University from Galaţi

Florian Marcel Nuţă is a Professor Dr. Habil. at Danubius University from Galaţi, with over 17 years of teaching and research experience. He is affiliated with Ştefan cel Mare University of Suceava, Doctoral School of Social and Human Sciences, for research and doctoral supervision. His scientific research is conducted in the following fields: Environmental Accounting, Climate Change Economics, Energy Economics, Urban Environmental Accounting, Carbon Accounting, Green Taxation, and Public Policy.

He is involved in numerous editorial initiatives as editor-in-chief, editor, member of the international scientific board, and reviewer for scientific journals and international conferences, conducting more than 500 peer-reviews during his academic career.

Dr. Nuţă worked as a reviewer for Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews, Energy Efficiency, Resources Policy, Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments, Economic Research, Journal of Entrepreneurship in Emerging Countries, Cogent Business and Management, and other peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Michela Giorcelli

Muhammad Abrar, Ph.D.

Professor & Director, Lyallpur Business School (LBS), Government College University Faisalabad

Dr. Muhammad Abrar is a Management Sciences (Marketing) Professor. Currently serving as a Professor & Director Lyallpur business school at Government College University, Faisalabad, Pakistan. He received his PhD in Business Administration (Marketing) from The Huazhong University of Science and Technology Wuhan, P.R.China, and holds an MBA from Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Pakistan and M.Sc. (Hons.) Agronomy degree from the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan. He is a well-known scholar in his research areas (Brand Management, Supply Chain Management, Digital Marketing, Services Marketing, Management, and Business Education.).His scholarly peer-reviewed research articles have been published in the top journals, e.g., Journal of Enterprise Information Management, Management Decision, Journal of Competitiveness, Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Economic and Industrial Democracy, International Journal of Emerging Markets, Chinese Management Studies, Autex Research Journal, SAGE Open, Quality & Quantity, Industria Textila, Journal of Islamic Marketing. He can be contacted at: abrarphd@gcuf.edu.pk.

Ben Fahimnia

Ben Fahimnia, Ph.D.

Professor and Chair (Supply Chain Management), The University of Sydney

Ben Fahimnia is a Professor and Chair at the University of Sydney, and also serves as Director for the Supply Chain & Logistics Association of Australia (SCLAA). Since receiving his PhD in 2011, he has held various academic positions and leadership roles prior to his promotion to a Professor in 2016, distinguishing him as the youngest Australian Full Professor. He has a multidisciplinary background with degrees and experience in business, engineering, psychology, and dramatic arts. As an expert in applied and problem-driven research, Prof Fahimnia leads multidisciplinary teams tasked to develop decision-making approaches to help individuals and organizations make systematic and informed decisions. He is frequently consulted by a range of businesses from small and medium size companies to Fortune 500 corporations. His research has attracted substantial funding of over $120m from governments, industries, and universities. He is an award-winning speaker at various conferences and industry events, and his articles have been published in premier journals and conference proceedings.

Title of Speech: Building Resilience in Essential Supply Chains: The Cornerstone of a Robust Global Economy

David Rapson

David Rapson, Ph.D.

Professor, Department of Economics, UC Davis

David Rapson is a Chancellor's Leadership Professor in the Economics Department at UC Davis, Director of the Davis Energy Economics Program, and Policy Advisor & Senior Research Economist at the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank. The central objective of Professor Rapson's work is to understand and demonstrate how consumers and firms respond to incentives, and what this implies for effective energy, environmental and economic policy.

His work examines a central tension of the energy transition. On one hand, government intervention can improve outcomes when markets fail and when government policies set correct incentives; on the other hand, poorly conceived government interventions may create incentives that undermine goals that they are trying to achieve. Professor Rapson's research seeks to understand the difference to discern which policies will be effective.

At the moment, Professor Rapson's research primarily focuses on the transportation sector, where decarbonization is challenging due to the centrality of fossil fuels as the main energy input. He is an expert on electric vehicles, energy markets, climate policy and regulation. His research appears in the American Economic Review, Science, Nature, and other academic journals. Dr. Rapson has held various posts in service to the profession and the community. He is currently Treasurer of the US Association of Energy Economists and is on the Editorial Council of the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economics. From 2015-2019 he was Associate Editor of the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. He earned degrees from Dartmouth College (AB), Queen's University (MA) and Boston University (PhD).

Anh L. Tran

Anh L. Tran, Ph.D.

Professor of Finance; Academic Director, M&A Research Centre
Bayes Business School (formerly Cass), City, University of London

Dr Anh Tran is a Professor of Finance at Bayes Business School (formerly Cass Business School) of City, University of London in August 2010. He is the Academic Director of the M&A Research Centre, the Director of the Business School's summer programme, a fellow of the Gupta Governance Institute, and a fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy. He is also a founding member, trustee and vice president of the Vietnam Finance Association International. Professor Tran's research interests are in empirical corporate finance, including mergers and acquisitions, institutional investors, executive compensation, and corporate governance. He has published many research articles in world leading journals including Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and Management Science. His research papers have been presented at more than 40 international conferences and 60 university seminars around the world. He has been a co-chair of the annual academic conference in M&A at the Business School and acting as a journal editorial board member and a reviewer for many journals and conferences in the field.

Link to profile on the university website:
https://www.bayes.city.ac.uk/faculties-and-research/experts/anh-tran

Tim Forsyth

Tim Forsyth, Ph.D.

Professor of Environment and Development, London School of Economics and Political Science

Tim Forsyth works at the Department of International Development, London School of Economics and Political Science. His research focuses on the political and governance implications of global environmental policy within developing countries. His expertise includes political institutions, local politics, and the governance of scientific and local knowledge. He has worked mainly in South and Southeast Asia, with reference to forest policy, livelihoods, and connections to climate change policy. He has been a specialist adviser to the United Kingdom Parliamentary International Development Committee on two occasions, and has been a lead for the recent scoping exercise for transformative change for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Previously he was a research fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), London. He is a co-editor of five journals and was the lead editor of the Routledge Encyclopedia of International Development.

Title of Speech: New challenges for multi-level, multi-actor governance in global environmental policy: what lessons for institutional theory?

Avanidhar Subrahmanyam (Subra)

Avanidhar Subrahmanyam (Subra), Ph.D.

Distinguished Professor of Finance at UCLA

Professor Subrahmanyam ("Subra") is currently a Distinguished Professor of Finance and the Goldyne and Irwin Hearsh Chair in Money and Banking at UCLA. He received his Ph.D. in finance from the Anderson School in 1990. He was Assistant Professor at Columbia University from 1990 to 1993, and Visiting Associate Professor at Anderson in 1993-1994. His current research interests range from the relationship between the trading environment of a firm's stock and the firm's cost of capital to behavioral theories for asset price behavior to empirical determinants of the cross-section of equity returns. Professor Subrahmanyam is the author or coauthor of more than a hundred refereed journal articles on these and other subjects in leading finance and economics journals. He is a member of the Working Research Group on Market Microstructure recently established by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in Cambridge, Mass.

Title of Speech: Momentum, Reversals, and Investor Clientele

Thomas Reuter

Thomas Reuter, Ph.D.

Professorial Fellow, Asia Institute, University of Melbourne; Southeast Asia Institute, University of Bonn

Prof Thomas Reuter is a Professorial Fellow at the Asia Institute of the University of Melbourne (UoM) in Australia, but currently living in Germany and affiliated with the Southeast Asia Institute, University of Bonn. After obtaining his PhD from ANU in Australia in 1997, he taught at Heidelberg University in his native Germany, before taking up post-doctoral and QElI Fellowships at UoM, a Monash Research Fellowship at Monash University and an ARC Future Fellowship and professorship back at UoM. He was President of the Australian Anthropological Association (2002-2005) chair of the World Council of Anthropological Associations (2008-2012), Senior Vice-President of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (2008-2018), a member of the executive of the International Social Science Council (2013-2018) and an expert advisor to IPBES and IPCC. He is a member of the board of Future Earth (Asia) and the World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS), and a fellow of the European Academy of Science (EASA) and Academia Europaea (EA). Research in Indonesia and beyond has focused on indigenous people, social movements, religion, political elites, ecology, climate change, food security and globalisation. Prof Reuter has published fifteen books and over 150 articles.

Title of Speech: Sustainable Development means Managing the Future': An anthropological perspective on the central challenge of the 21st century

Lauren H. Cohen

Lauren H. Cohen, Ph.D.

L.E. Simmons Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

Lauren Cohen is the L.E. Simmons Professor in the Finance & Entrepreneurial Management Units at Harvard Business School and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is an Editor of the Review of Financial Studies, along with being a past Editor of Management Science, and serving on the editorial board of the Review of Asset Pricing Studies. He teaches in the MBA Program, Executive Education Program, Doctoral Program, and Special Custom Programs at the Harvard Business School.

Title of Speech: The ESG-Innovation Disconnect: New Insights into the Future of Green Innovation

Bige Kahraman Alper

Bige Kahraman Alper, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Finance, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

Bige Kahraman Alper holds a PhD in Economics from Yale University with specialisations in financial economics and econometrics. Her research focuses on analysing the sources of market frictions giving rise to market inefficiency and systematic liquidity crises. Her recent studies quantify the importance of various frictions - for instance, arising from capital constraints, organisational structures in asset management intermediaries and asymmetric information - and examine the role of financial innovation that can help markets overcome these frictions. Her papers appear in top academic journals such as Journal of Finance and Review of Financial Studies.

Title of Speech: ES Risks and Shareholder Voice

Amir Amel-Zadeh

Amir Amel-Zadeh, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Accounting, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

Amir Amel-Zadeh's research examines the effects of companies' financial and non-financial information disclosures on capital markets and the mediating role of accounting standards and information intermediaries. Amir's research has been published in leading academic and practitioner journals such as The Accounting Review, Review of Accounting Studies, and Financial Analyst Journal. His work has been cited by the business press such as the Financial Times and the Guardian as well as in a variety of policy documents by the EU, Bank of International Settlements, IMF, World Economic Forum and by accounting standard setters. He currently serves as Associate Editor for the Special Issue on Business and Climate Change at Management Science and is on the Editorial Board of Accounting and Business Research. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge.

Title of Speech: Sustainability and capital markets: Do investors care about ESG?

David Zilberman

David Zilberman, Ph.D.

Professor, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California at Berkeley

DAVID ZILBERMAN is a Professor, Extension specialist and holder of the Robinson Chair in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California at Berkeley. His areas of expertise include agricultural and environmental economics and policy, water, marketing, risk management, the economics of innovation, natural resources, biotechnology, and biofuels. He is the recipient of the 2019 Wolf Prize in Agriculture, and the 2018-19 President of Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA). He is an elected member of the USA National academy of Science, a Fellow of the AAEA, the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists and Honorary Life Member of the International Association of Agricultural Economists. Among his awards is the 2005 and 2010 AAEA Publication of Enduring Quality Award and the UNESCO International Cannes Prize for Water and the Economy (2000). He has published more than 350 refereed articles in journals ranging from Science to ARE-Update and has edited 20 books. He has served as a Consultant to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the World Bank and FAO. He is the founding Academic Director of the Masters Development Practice program at UC Berkeley, and the founding co-director of the Bearhs ELP. He is also one of the Founders of the International Consortium of Applied Bio-economy Research (ICABR). David served as the chair of his department, director of the Giannini Foundation, and is a coeditor of ARE-Update and the Annual Review of Resource Economics. David contributes regularly to The Berkeley Blog.

Title of Speech: Designing Supply Chains to Implements Innovations

Michael Lyons

Michael Lyons, Ph.D.

Adjunct Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University

Serving in the Stanford position since 1988, he was a co-developer of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program with Prof. Tom Byers and the founding professor of Technology Venture Formation. He also co-teaches with Prof. Ray Levitt, Entrepreneurship in Civil and Environmental Engineering. Both courses are some of the highest rated courses in the School of Engineering. He is the co-creator of the Stanford Innovation and Entrepreneurship two-week program for existing high-tech companies produced and managed by the Stanford Center for Professional Development (SCPD).

Title of Speech: DER Applications of Advanced Energy Storage Technology in Micro Grid Deployments

Michela Giorcelli

Michela Giorcelli, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, University of California - Los Angeles

Michela Giorcelli is an Assistant Professor of Economics at UCLA. She is an economic historian, with interests in labor economics and the economics of innovation. Her research primarily focuses on the determinants of productivity and innovation in the 20th century.

Title of Speech: The Importance of Management Practices on Firm Performance Today and Historically