Meet the newest Costello researchers, and become acquainted with their scholarly profiles.
For the 2025-26 academic year, Costello College of Business at George Mason University welcomes an illustrious cohort of eight new research-focused faculty members. Their research profiles below typify the seamless integration of scholarly rigor and impactful relevance for which the Costello faculty is already well-known.
Associate Professors
Stephen A. Karolyi
Associate Professor, Finance
Stephen comes to Costello from a stint as senior economic advisor of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, U.S. Department of the Treasury. Prior to that, he served as assistant professor of finance and accounting at Carnegie Mellon and received his PhD from Yale University.
He has published widely in top-tier academic journals on topics including banking, financial intermediation and corporate finance. His recent work draws upon his regulatory experience to explore questions of direct policymaking relevance. For example, his co-authored paper in Journal of Finance uses the banking industry as a test case to show how competition may affect short-termism among publicly listed firms.
Min Shen
Associate Professor, Accounting
Min returns to George Mason University’s accounting faculty as the Phillip G. Buchanan Endowed Fellow after holding an associate professorship of accounting at Baruch College.
Min’s research on corporate disclosures, capital markets and information dissemination has been published in top-tier journals. Her recently published co-authored paper in The Accounting Review finds that the impact of corporate disclosures upon price discovery varies greatly with the financial performance of the company concerned in a given year. Min received her PhD from Michigan State University.
Mengxin Zhao
Associate Professor, Finance
Prior to joining Costello, Mengxin served as a senior financial economist at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and was an associate professor of finance at the University of Alberta. Her research has three overlapping themes: corporate governance, international finance and capital market frictions. Mengxin’s 2022 co-authored paper in The Review of Corporate Finance Studies challenges standard explanations of how equity market liberalization leads to growth in emerging economies.
Her scholarship has been recognized by the Pearson/Prentice Hall best paper competition and the European Corporate Governance Institute’s Standard Life Investment Best Paper Award, among others. She received her PhD from the University of Pittsburgh.
Assistant Professors
Qiaodan (Jordan) He
Assistant Professor, Information Systems and Operations Management
Qiaodan’s research focuses on the impact of artificial intelligence (AI), user behavior, and online platform strategies in mobile commerce and social media contexts. In a recent co-authored working paper, she analyses how aspects such as facial expressions and beauty filters affect engagement (“likes”) for online user-generated videos. She received her PhD from Lehigh University, where she also was awarded the Warren York Fellowship.
Chen Jing
Assistant Professor, Marketing
Chen’s research examines the social impact of firms, as well as how innovative technologies like generative AI are reshaping business and society. For example, one of his co-authored working papers uses machine learning to assess firms’ attempts to mitigate negative sentiment on social media following sociopolitical crises. His PhD is from Boston University.
David S. Lucas
Assistant Professor, Management
David is a three-time George Mason University alum, having received his bachelor’s, master’s and PhD from George Mason. He comes to Costello from Syracuse University, where he was the Edward Pettinella assistant professor of entrepreneurship.
He has published widely in top journals on topics ranging from entrepreneurship to public policy and grand societal challenges. His 2022 article in Academy of Management Journal was a finalist for the Responsible Research in Management Award.
Barbara Su
Assistant Professor, Accounting
Barbara comes to Costello from Temple University, where she was assistant professor of accounting. Her research specialty areas include financial institutions and debt markets. For example, Barbara’s co-authored 2022 paper in Contemporary Accounting Research uncovered how bank deregulation fueled changes in borrowing firms’ compensation structures for top managers.
Prior to entering academia, she acquired professional experience as an analyst and financial auditor for Diageo, Bain & Company and General Electric in Beijing and London. She completed her PhD at University of Toronto.
Zhechao Yang
Assistant Professor, Information Systems and Operations Management
Zhechao’s research interests include the economics of AI, social media, e-commerce retailing and design science. For example, her co-authored working paper finds that adding AI players to online video games boosts engagement and teamwork among human gamers. She has also published in Production and Operations Management. She received her PhD from University of Florida.