Faculty Research

McCombs Welcomes 14 New Faculty Members
This year, the McCombs School hired 14 new faculty in tenure-track positions. This group hails from all over the world with research interests ranging from executive compensation and investor over-confidence to dynamic programming and social networks. We’re pleased to introduce these fine new faculty members who are helping the school meet its goal of becoming the top public business school in the nation.

Accounting Department

Carlos Corona, assistant professor, joins McCombs after obtaining his Ph.D. in accounting from Stanford University. A native of Spain, Corona earned an MBA from IESE Business School in Barcelona. His research interests include the increasing importance of intangible assets in modern economies and earnings management as a relational outcome. Corona pursued a consulting career at A.T. Kearney and Quarck Consultores, S.L.



Volker Laux, assistant professor, obtained his Ph.D. in business administration from Frankfurt’s Goethe University. He taught at Carnegie Mellon University as an assistant professor of accounting and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Columbia University. Laux’s research interests encompass organizational design, management control systems and executive compensation.




Associate Professor Lillian Mills joins the McCombs School as a Deloitte Centennial Fellow in Accounting. She obtained her Ph.D. at the University of Michigan and began teaching at the University of Arizona in 1997. She became an associate professor at Arizona in 2003 and taught undergraduate and graduate classes in federal and international taxation. Among her research interests are tax compliance and international taxation. Professor Mills especially values her continuing working relationship with the IRS Large and Midsize Business Research Division.

Yanhua (Sunny) Yang, assistant professor, received her Ph.D. in accounting from the University of Colorado at Boulder where she taught introductory and intermediate accounting. Licensed as a CPA in her native China, Yang is researching the discipline effect of cash flow forecasts on earnings management and reverse stock splits.





Assistant Professor Yong Yu’s education background includes an accounting Ph.D. from Penn State and an economics master’s degree from Tulane University. His research focuses on the behavior of institutional investors and the role of financial analysts as informational intermediaries. Yu also has worked as an auditor in his home country of China.





Finance Department

Bing Han, assistant professor, comes to McCombs from the Ohio State University where he was an assistant professor of finance. Han holds a Ph.D. in finance from the University of California at Los Angeles, and a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Chicago. Investment theory, behavioral finance and risk management are among his research interests.




Assistant Professor Alok Kumar’s previous teaching post was as an assistant professor of finance at Notre Dame. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Cornell University and his management master’s degree from Yale University. Kumar’s research involves issues such as investor over-confidence, racially directed stock investments and behavioral biases for newly public firms. Kumar has worked as a consultant for Commonfund Securities, Postnieks Capital Management and Oracle Corp.




Information, Risk, and Operations Management (IROM)

Qi (Annabelle) Feng, assistant professor, moved to Austin from the University of Texas at Dallas where she obtained her Ph.D. in operations management and taught operations and production management to undergraduates. Feng has worked as a research associate for Hewlett-Packard and a business consultant for Arthur Anderson in Shanghai, China. Optimal control and dynamic programming, inventory control and supply chain management, and models of economic growth are some of Feng’s research interests.


Belgium-native Dorothee Honhon, assistant professor, received her Ph.D. in operations management from New York University. Honhon obtained her MBA from Belgium’s University of Liege. Her research concentrates on large-scale dynamic programming, assortment planning, inventory management and retail operations management. In 2005, Honhon was honored with the Stern Award for Ph.D. Teaching Excellence.



Ramandeep Randhawa, assistant professor, comes to Texas from Stanford where he completed a Ph.D. in business operations, information and technology. Randhawa taught revenue optimization to Stanford MBA students. Service operations, stochastic models and mechanical design are some of Randhawa’s research topics.






Management Department

Professor Martin Kilduff comes to Texas from Penn State where he served as professor of organizational behavior since 1999. He earned his Ph.D. from Cornell University and his MBA from Washington State University. Kilduff’s research areas include behavioral decision theory, organizational behavior, social networks and strategic decision making.





Francisco Polidoro Jr., assistant professor, obtained his Ph.D. in corporate strategy from the University of Michigan and his MBA from the Henley Management College in England. From 1988 to 2001, Polidoro worked for Mercedes-Benz in the areas of human resources, project management and sales and marketing. His research interests include innovation and institutions, strategic alliances, strategic management, and technology and innovation management.



Violina Rindova, associate professor, joins McCombs from the Department of Management and Organization at the University of Maryland. She obtained her Ph.D. from New York University, her MBA from Madrid Business School and her JD from Bulgaria’s Sophia University. Rindova currently serves on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Journal and Organizational Studies, Corporate Reputation Review and the Journal of Management. She is also assistant editor for the Academy of Management Review.



Marketing Department

Garrett Sonnier, assistant professor, completed his Ph.D. at the University of California at Los Angeles Anderson School of Management, with a one-year stint at the University of Chicago as a visiting student. He has worked as a strategic planning and research manager for Toyota and as an economist for the United States Department of Agriculture. Sonnier was a guest lecturer from 2003 to 2005 at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. His research interests include bayesian methods and brand management.