What is the Applied Research Award?
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Now in its tenth year, the BlackRock Applied Research Award recognizes the top five job market papers submitted by PhD candidates on a practical topic pertaining to financial markets, economics, investment management, or risk management. The 2024 BlackRock Applied Research Award will take place in India for the tenth edition!
The Award will grant $10,000 to the winning job market paper submitted by PhD candidates and $2,000 to the runners-up. Job market papers should be based on quantitative research and provide practical solutions to the challenges faced by investors and risk managers.
2024 Academic Panel
Dr. Tirthankar Patnaik, Chief Economist at the National Stock Exchange of India Limited. Prior to joining NSE, Dr. Patnaik worked at investment banking firms such as Mizuho Securities, Citi, and Religare. His expertise lies in macro and portfolio strategy, corporate finance, Indian economy and markets, consumer analytics, financial econometrics. He holds a PhD from IGIDR.
Dr. Sankarshan Basu, Professor at IIM Bangalore. He has authored several papers in renowned international journals, including Insurance: Mathematics and Economics and the Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference. Dr. Basu is currently the President of the Asia-Pacific Risk and Insurance Association (APRIA).
Dr. Prachi Mishra, Dr. Prachi is faculty at Ashoka University. Previously she was chief of the Systemic Issues Division and Advisor in the Research Department at the International Monetary Fund. Between 2018 and 2020, she worked at Goldman Sachs as Managing Director, Global Macro Research, and India Chief Economist. During 2014-17, she served as Specialist Adviser and Head of the Strategic Research Unit at the Reserve Bank of India. During 2012-13, she was Senior Economist in the Office of Chief Economic Advisor in India’s Ministry of Finance, and at the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council.. She has a PhD in Economics from Columbia University and a Masters from the Delhi School of Economics.
Dr. Pratap Kumar, Member of the Board of Advisers at IIM Lucknow and Faculty at the Thapar Institute. He has previously served in various advisory roles, including Deputy Secretary at the Prime Minister’s Office, Joint Secretary for Infrastructure Policy & Finance at the Ministry of Finance, Principal Economic Adviser in New Delhi, and with the World Bank in Washington, DC. Dr. Pratap has MBA from IIM, Lucknow and a PhD from University of Maryland, College Park, USA.
Dr. Chinmoy Ghosh, Department Head and Gladstein Professor of Finance at the University of Connecticut. He led the development of the Master of Science in Financial Risk Management (MsFRM), one of the Business School’s most successful graduate programs. Dr. Ghosh has served as a major or associate advisor on over a dozen PhD dissertation. He has published over fifty articles in academic journals. He is ranked among the top 20 most prolific research scholars in the world in Real Estate, and among the top 3 percent of research scholars in Finance. Dr. Ghosh has PhD in Finance from Penn State University and Masters from IIM Calcutta.
Dr. Andrew Ang, Managing Director at BlackRock, is Head of Factors, Sustainable and Solutions (FS-Squared). He also serves as Senior Advisor to BlackRock Retirement Solutions. As part of BlackRock Systematic, which manages over $220 billion, FS-Squared focuses on proprietary factor investing, delivering cutting-edge sustainable alpha, ESG outcomes and product innovation. Dr. Ang earned a BEc(Hons) from Macquarie University, and a PhD in finance and MS in statistics from Stanford University.
