New faculty
October 28, 2019
ANDREW ACITO
Assistant professor
Accounting and Information Systems
EDUCATION
• Ph.D., Accounting, University of Iowa, 2011
• B.S., Finance and Business Process Management, Indiana University, 2002
Acito’s research publications have examined such topics as the materiality of accounting errors, and the effects of Public Company Accounting Oversight Board inspections on auditor-client relationships.
At Michigan State University, he taught an undergraduate course on auditing, a graduate course on financial reporting decisions, and an international student orientation course in the master’s program in accounting.
His honors and awards include Outstanding Teacher awards in the master’s and undergraduate accounting programs at Michigan State, the Ballard and Seashore Fellowship at the University of Iowa, and the American Accounting Association/Deloitte Doctoral Consortium Fellowship.
Before embarking on his graduate studies, Acito worked at 3M Company in St. Paul, Minnesota, as a financial analyst and as an internal auditor.
AYENDA KEMP
Assistant professor
Management
EDUCATION
• Ph.D., International Management Studies, University of Texas at Dallas, 2018
• M.S., Statistical Computing, University of Central Florida, 2013
• B.S., Mathematics, University of Central Florida, 2009
Acito’s research publications have examined such topics as the materiality of accounting errors, and the effects of Public Company Accounting Oversight Board inspections on auditor-client relationships.
Kemp’s research interests lie at the intersection of strategy and organization theory, with a focus on understanding how firms may structure intrafirm and interfirm relationships or networks to best enhance organizational learning, innovation, and performance outcomes.
Before joining Virginia Tech, Kemp worked as a forecasting analyst in the energy industry.
LIANG TAN
Assistant professor
Accounting and Information Systems
EDUCATION
• Ph.D., Accounting and Information Management, Northwestern University, 2011
• M.A., Economics, Tufts University, 2006
• BA, International Economics, Renmin University of China, 2011
Tan’s research interests are in debt contracting, disclosure, corporate governance, audit, tax avoidance, and labor.
Tan has published his research in elite journals in his field. His publications have examined such topics as institutional ownership and corporate tax avoidance; labor unemployment concern and corporate discretionary disclosure; and consequences of debt covenant violations.
His honors and awards include the AAA/Deloitte Foundation J. Michael Cook Doctoral Consortium Fellowship and the Lawrence Revsine Research Fellowship from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.
Tan was formerly an assistant professor of accountancy at George Washington University, where he taught introductory managerial accounting.
Before embarking on his graduate studies, he was a certified public accountant in China and worked as a senior auditor at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Beijing for two years.
NGOC-KHANH TRAN
Assistant professor
Finance, Insurance, and Business Law
EDUCATION
• Ph.D., Financial Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012
• Ph.D.,Theoretical Physics, University of Virginia, 2006
• B.S. Physics, Uniwersytet Gdanski (Poland) and Universite Paris Sud (France), 1999
Tran’s research interests are in the economics and policy implications of the following: asset pricing (theoretical and empirical); international finance (structural and reduced-form models of exchange rates); inflation risks (pricing and real asset liquidities); and financial intermediation (contagions).
His publications in elite journals in the field have examined such topics as pricing risks across currency denominations, and rare disasters and risk sharing with heterogeneous beliefs.
At Washington University in St. Louis, where he was an assistant professor, Tran taught graduate courses on fixed income securities, investments, introductory and advanced asset pricing, and the stochastic foundations of finance. He has served on the dissertation committees of six doctoral students and mentored three others.
MARSHALL VANCE
Assistant professor
Accounting and Information Systems
EDUCATION
• Ph.D., Accounting, University of Pennsylvania, 2013
• M.S., Accounting, Brigham Young University, 2007
• B.S., Accounting, Brigham Young University, 2007
Vance’s research examines the design and effects of executive and broad-based compensation plans.
His recent papers address the role of proxy advisory firms in the design of executive compensation, how managers weight on-the-job performance versus initial assessments of ability in making promotion decisions, and how employees respond to equity compensation plans, among other topics.
His research has been published in elite accounting and management journals, including Journal of Accounting Research and Journal of International Business Studies, and has been recognized with multiple awards through the American Accounting Association.
Vance has also been awarded several competitive grants and fellowships to support his research. He is a senior fellow of the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing at Rutgers University.
Vance has taught both managerial and financial accounting courses. Before joining Virginia Tech, he worked at the University of Michigan, the University of Southern California, and the Wharton School.
