Xiaoyan Zhang is the Xinyuan Chair Professor of Finance and Associate Dean of the PBC School of Finance, Tsinghua University. She received her B.A. in Economics from Beijing University in 1997, and Ph.D. in Finance (with honor) from Columbia Business School in 2002. After graduation, Professor Zhang first joined the Johnson School of Management at Cornell University as an Assistant Professor of Finance, and later she worked at the Krannert School of Management at Purdue University as Duke Realty Chair Full Professor of Finance.
Professor Zhang enjoys teaching and offers courses on financial derivatives and risk management for undergraduate, Master of Finance, MBA, financial engineering and executive programs. She was nominated/awarded for various teaching awards for many times at both Cornell University and Purdue University. In 2014, Professor Zhang was named one of the “Top 40 under 40” Business School professors in the world. At PBC School of Finance, Professor Zhang oversees the curriculum designs for the MF, PHD and GFD programs, and serves as the liaison between teaching programs and faculty.
Professor Zhang's research focuses on international finance, empirical asset pricing and applied econometrics. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis and other leading finance journals. Her article, “The Cross-Section of Volatility and Expected Returns” (with Andrew Ang, Robert Hodrick, and Yuhang Xing), was announced one of the top 10 cited papers published in Journal of Finance since 2000. Her article, "Which Shorts Are Informed", (with Ekkehart Boehmer and Charles Jones), won the BSI Gamma Foundation Award (2005). Professor Zhang has won Best Paper Award at the 16th Mitsui Finance Symposium (2009) at the University of Michigan. Her research on international finance and asset management has received awards from the European Central Bank and the Q Group Research Fund.
Due to her research excellence, Professor Zhang is appointed to be associate editor at Management Science, Financial Management, Journal of Banking and Finance and Journal of Empirical Finance. Professor Zhang is currently the Associate Dean of Finance at PBC School of Finance, Tsinghua University. She is also a Deputy Director of Tsinghua University National Institute of Financial Research and Tsinghua Fintech Research Institute. Prof. Zhang also heads the Xinyuan Fintech Research Center. She is currently serving as a committee member of the CSRC 17th Issuance Examination Committee.