PhD Corner

Three Carson College doctoral students earned top prizes in the 2023 WSU Graduate and Professional Student Association Research Exposition and Academic Showcase in the business, communication, and political sciences category. From left: Ramin Sepehrirad, operations and management science, won first place and $800. Jennifer Han, hospitality and tourism management, won second place and $500. Shirin Shahsavand, operations and management science, won third place and $300. Shahsavand’s advisor Kevin Mayo, assistant professor of finance and management science, is on the right.

Two Carson College doctoral students received top honors in the 2025 WSU Graduate and Professional Student Association (GPSA) Research Exposition and Academic Showcase in the business, communications, and political sciences category. Mariam Hilda Ola (second person from the left), accounting, won 2nd Place and $500, and Yingwei (Wayne) Xu (far right), hospitality and tourism management, earned 3rd Place and $300. Xu also won the GPSA’s graduate student instructor excellence award.

Seyede (Mina) Hosseini, hospitality & tourism management, received the Best Paper Award at the 31st Annual Graduate Education and Graduate Student Research Conference in Hospitality and Tourism, hosted by Auburn University in January 2026. Her paper, “When AI Is Talking Like a Friend: The Role of AI Language Style and Product Fit on Impulsive Buying Intentions,” was recognized by the International Journal of Hospitality Management.

Amirhossein Moadab, operations & management science, received the 2025 Worthy, DePauw & Wang Service Leadership Award from the WSU Graduate and Professional Student Association. The award recognizes graduate students who demonstrate exceptional leadership and advocacy in service of their peers across the university community.

Ramin Sepehrirad, operations and management science, won a Best Reviewer Award in the operations and supply chain management division at the Academy of Management Conference in August 2023.

Shirin Shahsavand, operations and management science, was selected to participate in the FutureBAProf Workshop at the University of Iowa in August 2023.

Shahsavand was also chosen for the INFORMS “To My Younger Self” mentoring program for female doctoral students, which pairs participants with a highly successful female scholar.

Pingping Tang, Operations and Management Science, was named a 2024 WSU Woman of Distinction. Tang also received the Outstanding Student Volunteer Award from the WSU Alumni Association in 2024 for her volunteer work providing tax assistance for the WSU and Pullman community.

Weikun Xu, operations & management science, received the 2025 Graduate Teaching Assistant Excellence Award from the WSU Graduate and Professional Student Association. The award recognizes TAs who go above and beyond in their instructional duties.

Ruixue (Rachel) Gao (finance), with coauthors J. Chen and Professor George Jiang, published “Do Robinhood Investors Care About ESG?” Applied Economics (2025) 57(58):9979–9994.

Josh Groves (marketing & international business) and coauthors Ryan Schill, Ronei Leonel, and David F. Jorgensen, published “Norfana: the Challenges to the Viability of a New Product,” Brazilian Journal of Teaching Cases in Administration (2023) 13(1): Doc. 4

Xiaoli Ma (finance) and coauthors Yun Ma, and Professor George Jiang published “Insider Trading Patterns During the COVID Period,” Pacific-Basin Finance Journal (2025) 94:102957.

Amirhossein Moadab (operations and management science) has published “Designing a Sustainable-Resilient-Responsive Supply Chain Network Considering Uncertainty in the COVID-19 Era,” Expert Systems with Applications (Oct. 2023) 227, 120334: 1-16.

Moadab is also the lead author of “Drone Routing Problem Model for Last-Mile Delivery Using the Public Transportation Capacity as Moving Charging Stations,” Nature Scientific Reports, (2022) 12, 6361: 1-16.

Ramin Sepehrirad and coauthors Paul F. Skilton, Alan Mackelprang, and Ednilson Bernardes published “Supply Base attributes and diversion risk in a supply chain for hazardous pharmaceutical products,” Journal of Operations Management, Special Issues on Health Care Supply Chains, (2024) 1–20.

Shirin Shahsavand (operations & management science) and coauthor Professor Chuck Munson published “Smart Scheduling to Minimize Downtime on Automated Dispensing Machines,” Operations Research Forum (2025) 6(2):1–16.

Pingping Tang (operations & management science) and coauthors Ozden Bayazit and Kun Liao published “Artificial intelligence in trucking industry: a triple-win environmental, social and governance approach,” International Journal of Business Continuity and Risk Management (2025) 15(1), 32-45.

Yingwei (Wayne) Xu (hospitality and tourism management) and coauthors Chun-Da Chen and Ming-Hsiang Chen published “Understanding Herding Behavior in Hospitality Stocks,” International Journal of Hospitality Management (2026) 133:104489.

Xu also coauthored “When Disclosing the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Technology Integration into Service Delivery Backfires: Roles of Fear of AI, Identity Threat and Existential Threat,” International Journal of Hospitality Management (2024) 122:103829, with Gongmei (May) Zhou, Ruiying (Raine) Cai, and Dogan Gursoy, as well as “Comparative Analysis of Per-Tourist and Total Carbon Emissions Generated in Hospitality and Tourism Sectors,” Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management (2024) 33(8):1100–1128, with Gursoy.

Weikun Xu (finance and management science) and coauthor, Assistant Professor Xinchang Wang published “Joint Estimation of the Arrival Rate and Customer Taste Coefficients from Censored Transactional Data,” Production and Operations Management, (2025) 1-39.

Zhonghua Zhang (accounting) and coauthor Professor Chase Potter published “Does puffery matter? Evidence from online business acquisitions,” Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting (2025).