Carlson School Faculty Promotions 2024

Seven Carlson School faculty members earned promotions, including tenure, in 2024. These significant career milestones indicate outstanding performance and meaningful contributions to the school, the university, and their disciplines.

Congratulations to the following faculty members:

From Assistant Professor to Associate Professor with Tenure

Sofia Bapna, Information and Decision Sciences

Bapna’s multidisciplinary research interests encompass digital platforms, entrepreneurship, and gender gaps, influenced by her background as a female IT professional and digital entrepreneur. Her research includes two main streams: addressing women’s underrepresentation in STEM, identifying interventions to reduce gender gaps, and evaluating the effectiveness of legislation; and exploring entrepreneurship in the digital economy, particularly in raising capital through crowdfunding and growing online brand communities.

Xuan Bi, Information and Decision Sciences

Bi’s general research goal is to design data-driven solutions and provide decision support to benefit organizations and individuals. His research mainly focuses on the interface of statistics, machine learning, and information systems, which aims at creating and applying data-driven methodologies to address real-world, large-scale, business, and scientific problems. Specifically, his works revolve around personalization, with a special interest in recommender systems and data privacy. He serves as associate editor for the Journal of the American Statistical Association.

Necati Ertekin, Supply Chain and Operations

Ertekin has developed a research stream that is grounded in practice with a strong managerial focus. His primary research interests center on retail operations and operations/marketing interface with an emphasis on omnichannel retailing, store labor, and the behavioral aspects of consumer returns. Prior to pursuing a PhD, he served as a navy officer for eight years and resigned as a lieutenant. He has been invited to present his works at professional and practitioner conferences, and has consulted with several national retailers.

Juliana Salomao, Finance

Salomao’s research is focused on the sovereign and corporate credit markets. In her latest work, she analyzes the effect of the credit default swap (CDS) market on sovereign credit markets. Her results show that the existence of a CDS market results in lower default probability, higher debt levels, and lower financing costs for the country. Her other projects explore the predictability of excess returns on long bonds and the relationship between firm financing and the business cycle.

Richard Thakor, Finance

Thakor’s research interests are in empirical and theoretical corporate finance, in the areas of R&D and innovation, healthcare finance, financial institutions, and the effects of access to financing on small firms. Prior to earning his PhD, he worked in investment management as a derivatives trading analyst. He is also a research affiliate at the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering, and a research affiliate at the WFA Center for Finance and Accounting Research at Washington University in St. Louis.

From Associate Professor to Full Professor

Gaoqing Zhang, Accounting

Zhang’s research interests lie in the real effects of accounting measurements and disclosure, particularly in the financial industry, and the design of accounting standards and disclosure regulations. He currently serves on the editorial board of The Accounting Review. In 2023, he was awarded the Honeywell Professorship in Accounting.

Yi Zhu, Marketing

Zhu’s research interests focus on the application of industrial organization models in marketing, online auctions, consumer search, advertising, media slant, sharing economy, and Chinese economy. In 2023, he was awarded the Margaret J. Holden and Dorothy A. Werlich Endowed Professorship. Zhu currently serves on the editorial review board of Marketing Science and Journal of Marketing Research.