Press Releases Chicago Booth announces 10 new faculty appointments for the 2020-2021 academic year

The University of Chicago Booth School of Business has announced 10 new faculty members for the upcoming 2020-2021 academic year. Included in the group of esteemed appointments are Matthew J. Notowidigdo, Professor of Economics, and Alexander Todorov, Professor of Behavioral Science.

Notowidigdo’s research focuses on labor economics and health economics. Todorov studies how people evaluate their environments, and how these evaluations shape perception, decisions and social interactions.

“At Booth, our mission is to create knowledge with enduring impact, and influence and educate current and future leaders,” said Doug Skinner, Deputy Dean for Faculty and Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Accounting at Chicago Booth. “The proven expertise, dedicated research interests, and real-world experiences of this group of remarkable scholars helps us further this mission. We welcome them to the Booth community.”

The group of new professors joining Chicago Booth include:

Giovanni Compiani, Assistant Professor of Marketing

Giovanni Compiani’s research primarily focuses on industrial organization and quantitative marketing, with an emphasis on applying frontier econometric methods to analyze markets and inform policy. Compiani earned PhD, MPhil, and MA degrees all in economics from Yale University. Additionally, he holds MSc and BSc degrees in economics from Bocconi University. He joins Booth from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.

Alex Imas, Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science

Alex Imas’ research spans a variety of topics across economics and psychology. He has explored the role of incorrect beliefs in discrimination, the prevalence of behavioral biases amongst expert and non-expert investors, and how to better motivate performance by incorporating psychology into incentives. Imas earned a PhD in economics from the University of California, San Diego, and a BA in economics from Northwestern University. He joins Booth from Carnegie Mellon.

Haihao (Sean) Lu, Assistant Professor of Operations Management

Haihao (Sean) Lu’s research interests focus on extending the computational and mathematical boundaries of methods for solving the optimization problems that arise in data science, machine learning, and operations research. Lu earned his PhD in Operations Research and Applied Mathematics from MIT, and his BS in Mathematics from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He joins Booth from Google Research NYC, where he was a visiting researcher.

Rad Niazadeh, Assistant Professor of Operations Management

Rad Niazadeh studies the interplay between algorithms, incentives, and learning in online marketplaces, with a focus on applications in revenue management and market design. He received his PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University (minored in Applied Mathematics), and holds M.Sc. and B.Sc. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology. He joins Booth from Google Research NYC, where he was a visiting researcher.

Matthew J. Notowidigdo, Professor of Economics

Matthew J. Notowidigdo studies a broad set of topics in labor economics and health economics. In labor economics, his research has focused on understanding the causes and consequences of long-term unemployment and the economic effects of unemployment insurance over the business cycle. His health economics research focuses on the effects of public health insurance on labor supply and the effects of income on health spending. Notowidigdo studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he earned a PhD in economics, a MEng in computer science, a BS in economics, and a BS in computer engineering. He was an assistant professor at Booth in 2010, and returns to the school from Northwestern University.

Christina Patterson, Assistant Professor of Macroeconomics and Biehler Junior Faculty Fellow

Christina Patterson studies macroeconomics and labor economics, with a focus on how inequality across workers and firms can affect the economy’s response to shocks. Patterson earned a PhD in economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and holds a BA in mathematics and economics from Columbia University. She joins Booth from Northwestern University.

Delphine Samuels, Assistant Professor of Accounting

Delphine Samuels’ research focuses on financial reporting transparency in the private and public sectors. Her recent work examines how corporations substitute between different types of financial disclosures, and the economics of corporate misreporting. Her work on the public sector examines the incentives for financial disclosure at the state and local municipality levels, and the effects of transparency in governments’ procurement processes. Samuels holds a PhD in accounting from The Wharton School, a MAcc from USC, and a BS in management from the University of Lausanne. She joins Booth from MIT Sloan School of Management.

Christopher Stewart, Assistant Professor of Accounting

Christopher Stewart is broadly interested in empirical accounting research, but he has a special focus on research questions that lie at the intersection of corporate law, corporate finance, and accounting. Stewart holds a PhD and Master of Commerce in Accounting from the University of Melbourne, an MBA in Finance from Wilfrid Laurier University (Canada), and a BA from Laurentian University (Canada). He joins Booth from the University of Melbourne.

Alexander Todorov, Professor of Behavioral Science

Alexander Todorov studies how people perceive, evaluate, and make sense of the social world. His research uses multiple methods: from behavioral experiments to building of computational models. Todorov earned a PhD from New York University, a Research MA from the New School for Social Research, and a BA from Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” in Sofia, Bulgaria. He joins Booth from Princeton University.

Quentin Vandeweyer, Assistant Professor of Finance

Quentin Vandeweyer’s research interests are in macro-finance, asset pricing, and monetary economics. He earned a PhD in Economics from Sciences Po Paris and a M.Sc. in Economics from Ecole Polytechnique. He joins Booth from the European Central Bank where he worked in the Research Directorate.