Join a close-knit, diverse and productive group of Marketing doctoral scholars.
Dae-Yong Ahn
Dae-Yong Ahn is a PhD student in Marketing at the University of Texas at Austin. He received a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a Master’s degree from the University of Iowa. Dae-Yong Ahn has been trained in the areas of economics and statistics. He has taught principles of microeconomics, principles of macroeconomics, marketing research, and elementary statistics and inference. His areas of research interest include database marketing and marketing models.
Jacob Brower
Jacob Brower is a doctoral student in the Marketing department at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his BA in Economics from the State University of New York College at Geneseo and an MA in Economics from Syracuse University. Jake worked for a year in real estate finance and spent two years as a marketing research analyst and consultant in Syracuse, NY before moving to Austin to pursue his doctorate. His current focus is on Marketing strategy, using his quantitative background to address questions related to sustainability and corporate social responsibility. Outside of Marketing, his interests include competitive athletics, as well as riding his motorcycle, travel, live music, and outdoor activities such as kayaking, biking, and hiking.
Sunaina Chugani
Sunaina Chugani is a doctoral student in the Marketing department at the University of Texas at Austin. Her area of focus is consumer behavior with a special interest in affect and decision making. Sunaina received her Bachelor's degree in Finance and her MBA from the University of Texas-Pan American. Outside of marketing, Sunaina is interested in microfinance, service activities, Sufism, traveling, learning Indian traditional music, and the outdoors.
Szu-Chi Huang
Szu-Chi Huang is a first-year doctoral student in Marketing at the University of Texas at Austin. She received double B.S. degrees in Business Administration and Business/Financial Laws at the National Taiwan University, and a Masters degree in Advertising at the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to her graduate study, she worked in JWT Taipei office as Account Manager for three years. Her past clients include multinational marketers like Unilever and Estee Lauder. She has held teaching assistantships in Principals of Marketing, Consumer Behavior, and Retail Merchandising. She has also held research assistantships in Media Research Lab and Marketing Department, McCombs School of Business.
Her research interests relate to the field of consumer behaviors, with the focus on motivation, goal, and deception. She has presented various papers at the AAA, AEJMC, AMA conferences as well as the International Marketing Trends Congress in Europe
Saim Kashmiri
Saim Kashmiri is a first year Marketing Ph.D student at Mccombs. Saim joins our program with a 5 year brand management experience in Pakistan at Procter & Gamble and Nestle.
With a Chemical engineering bachelors degree from MIT and an MBA from LUMS Pakistan, Saim intends to capitalize his quantitative skills and work experience by conducting research in the field of Marketing strategy. He also intends to utilize his experience of working in Pakistan to test marketing strategy issues concerning developing countries. Saim's current research interests lie in the field of brand strategy, marketing metrics and product innovation. Saim is married and has one daughter.
Jae-Eun Namkoong
Jae-Eun Namkoong is a 1st year doctoral student in the Marketing department specializing in consumer behavior. She has an academic background in socio-cultural psychology and philosophy. She received her bachelor’s degree from Ewha Womans University and master’s degree from Korea University, both in Seoul, Korea.
Her previous research experience includes decision making and regret, with the focus on life-domain effect and the underlying motivational factors underlying this effect. She also participated in research activities of other various topics such as gambling behavior and educational behavior.
Many of these works were presented in conferences like SPSP and AASP, as well as in some other Korean conferences. She also has two publications: one in the Asian Journal of Social Psychology, which is about the impact of intra- vs. inter-personal norms on regret, and another one on parent’s educational behavior carried in the Korean Journal of Psychological and Social Issues.
As a newly admitted doctoral student in the McCombs School of Business, she just started looking for creative ways to apply her personal and academic background when making scholarly contributions to the field of marketing; and she is very excited about this. When she is not in the lab, she likes to spend time cleaning, socializing, swimming, and running.
Leonardo Nicolao
Vita: Download Vita
Leonardo Nicolao is originally from Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. He has received his BBA degree with concentration in Marketing and his MSc degree in Marketing from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil).
His interests in consumer behavior include consumer welfare, well-being and judgment and decision-making. Leonardo has presented papers at the Association for Consumer Research (ACR), Society for Consumer Psychology (SCP) and Society for Judgment and Decision Making (SJDM) Conferences. His research is currently under review at the Journal of Consumer Research. When he is not researching, Leonardo spends his time as the president of the UT Judo Club.
Debika Sihi
Debika Sihi is a PhD student in the Marketing department at McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. Debika received both her Bachelor in Business Administration and Master in Professional Accounting from UT. She is also a CPA. Prior to entering the program, Debika worked at Deloitte Tax LLP and then taught an introductory business class at McCombs. Debika’s extracurricular interests include working with Junior Achievement of Central Texas and the Capital Area Food Bank.
Shameek Sinha
Shameek Sinha is a Second Year PhD student in the Department of Marketing, University of Texas at Austin. He received his Bachelor’s Degree (with Honors) in Economics from Presidency College (Calcutta, India) under the University of Calcutta. He pursued a Master’s Degree in Quantitative Economics from Indian Statistical Institute (New Delhi, India). He then joined the PhD program in Economics at the University of Texas at Austin (Department of Economics). After three years in the Economics PhD program and getting a second Master’s Degree in Economics, he decided to join the Quantitative stream of the Marketing PhD program to pursue his interests in applied microeconomics which has widespread applications in Marketing.
Shameek’s current research projects include – modeling the optimal solicitation strategies of direct Marketers using Bayesian decision and information theoretic approaches; and using customer mix and choice models (based on customer actions and intensions) to devise optimal targeting and marketing communication strategies for retail chains. He also has interests in – theoretical and empirical industrial organization, especially product bundling contracts under channels and channel coordination; the role of customer metrics, especially customer satisfaction and loyalty for the financial performance of firms, and intra-regional and inter-regional diffusion of products and the role of marketing in facilitating the diffusion process. Shameek has taught courses in principles of microeconomics, economic and business statistics as well as principles of marketing and marketing research.
Nita Umashankar
Nita Umashankar is a doctoral student in the Marketing department at University of Texas at Austin, with special interests in marketing strategy and public policy. Nita is particularly interested in services innovation including the design, diffusion and value-creation of services. Additionally, she is interested in understanding the market mechanisms which affect poor and socially disadvantaged consumers. Nita received her BS in Molecular and Cellular Biology and her Honors BBA in Marketing and Entrepreneurship from The University of Arizona. Before entering the program, Nita spent a year working for a non-profit organization that assisted abused and destitute women in a village outside of Bangalore, India. Nita’s extracurricular interests include Indian classical dance, traveling, volunteering and spending time with friends and family.
Morgan Ward
Morgan Ward is a doctoral student in the marketing department at University of Texas at Austin, with special interests in consumer behavior, including judgment, decision making and consumer identity issues. She received her MBA from UT in 2005 after earning interdisciplinary certification in consumer behavior at Harvard University in 2003, and a BS in textile and apparel management at Cornell University in 1999. Before beginning doctoral studies, Morgan worked for Abercrombie and Fitch as a product merchant and as a consultant for McMillan|Doolittle LLC. a boutique retail consultancy, headquartered in Chicago, IL.
