New Fowler Faculty Share Their Research Interests

Eight faculty members who joined the Fowler College of Business during the fall of 2025 shared their research interests and projects during a colloquium held on November 14.

The participating faculty members included:

Mingming Ao (finance) is currently working on projects surrounding adjacent market expansion; bank regulation and product market competition; and debt covenants and real economy.  She currently has projects under development, conducting research on municipal bonds and the use of AI in stock analysis articles.

Xi Chen (finance) has current projects that include how venture capital impacts market strategies and growth; competitive positioning and innovation trajectories in firms transitioning to public markets; the effect of common ownership-driven collusion on mature public firms; and the determinants and consequences of patent licensing transactions within public firms. Her research-in-progress includes the spillover effect of ESG-focused funds in a mutual fund family; and the effect political ideology has on municipal bond yields and consumer spending.

Gianni De Bruyn (management) focuses his research on geopolitical dynamics and firm strategy and its impact on tensions and ownership complexity; tension concentration and ownership control; tensions and financial vs. strategic acquirers; and chaebol growth during U.S. occupation.

Mohsen Jozani (MIS) shared his research interests as GenAI information quality; IS security and privacy; digital markets success and product/social networks. His active research projects include experimental validation of self-reported security policy compliance; smartphone use and health; human evaluation of AI-generated responses; and founder collaboration, experience and crowdfunding success.

Zeyu Ou (accounting) has papers in progress about the search for board directors; an analysis of private equity research in the accounting industry; the effect of mandated EDGAR filings: and the effect of regulators’ disclosures within the private equity market. Her work in progress focuses on a new measure of human capital based on the director’s skill set in proxy filings.

Mahsa Paridar (marketing) reported her research agenda included the online environment and digital economy; bridging industry insights with research; and methodological rigor. She is now researching how online tipping is evolving as a social norm; the impact of rewards on user-generated content; the enhancement of freelancer-client communication; and role reversal and reputation transfer in buyers and sellers in a two-sided peer marketplace.

Chi Wan (finance) talked about his ongoing research surrounding labor market competition and corporate patent transparency; the relationship between ChatGPT and crowdfunding success; and the role of visual-verbal congruence in crowdfunding disclosures.

Nohel Zaman (MIS) shared that his areas of research interest include online product review analytics; risk and safety analytics of consumer products; e-commerce decision support; text mining online media for post-market food safety surveillance; using text data to predict mortgage loan payment delays; and combining sentiment and category-specific semantics to detect product defects.