Owl Have You Know

Stephen Cassell, principal at Architecture Research Office and lead architect of Asha and Farid Virani Hall, joins Maya Pomroy ’22 for a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Rice Business’ incredible new 112,000-square-foot home.

Stephen shares the decisions, constraints and unexpected opportunities that shaped Virani Hall — from protecting the artistic vision behind James Turrell’s “Twilight Epiphany” Skyspace to reinterpreting McNair Hall’s distinctive brickwork and creating spaces designed to bring undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and the wider Rice community together.

In this conversation, Stephen talks about designing spaces that encourage people to linger, connect and cross paths — from sculptural staircases and gathering spaces to Audrey’s and the West Quad. He also talks about designing for a future no one can fully predict, building flexibility into classrooms and gathering spaces that will evolve with the school’s needs.

The result is a building that looks forward without losing sight of where Rice came from. Stephen also reflects on what it means to see students finally inhabit a place that, for four years, existed largely as an idea.

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More About Asha and Farid Virani Hall

Located next to McNair Hall, Asha and Farid Virani Hall offers an additional 112,000 square feet for graduate and undergraduate business education at Rice Business. Skanska, one of the world’s largest project development and construction companies, and Sugar Land-based B. Bell Builders broke ground on the building in May 2024. Architecture Research Office led the design, with Houston-based Kirksey Architecture serving as executive architect. The facility was completed in 2026 and named in recognition of the generosity from Asha Virani ’89 and Farid Virani, Houston community and business leaders who helped establish the Virani Undergraduate School of Business in 2024. This impressive structure was built to accommodate the evolving needs of our community and our unprecedented growth — and features state-of-the-art classrooms, modern office spaces and vibrant amenities such as dining areas, open gathering spaces and facilities for private events.

Virani Hall was made possible by the generosity of many. Thanks to our donors who made the space possible:

Asha ’89 (B.A.) and Farid Virani
The Estate of Ralph S. O'Connor
The Elkins Foundation
Judy Ley Allen
Patti ’66 (B.A.) and Richard Everett ’67 (B.A.)
Starlett and Ben Hollingsworth ’64 (B.A.)
Nina and Sonu Kalra
MD Anderson Foundation
Karen and Chris Kreidler ’85 (B.A.; MBA, 1987)
Russ Pitman ’58 (B.A.)
Rice Business Alumni Association Board
Amy Sutton ’89 (B.A.; MBA, 1990) and Gary Chiles ’86 (B.A.)
Leslie ’81 (MAcc) and Jack Blanton ’01 (MBA)
Kathy and Paul Mann ’96 (MBA)
Rice Business Partners Board
Jennifer ’92 (B.A.) and Charlie Geer ’92 (B.A; MAcc, 1993)
Vivian L. Smith Foundation
Anadarko Rice Business Alumni
Heather and Daniel Bradshaw ’22 (MBA)
Isabel and Ransom Lummis ’89 (MBA)
Kristen and Gregory Mancini
Clara and Emeka Oyolu ’05 (MBA)
Waverly ’95 (B.A.) and Adam Peakes ’95 (B.A.)
EMBA Class of 2000
Class of 2006
Katherine and Osmar Abib ’81 (B.A.)
Karen ’77 (B.A.; MAcc, 1978) and Larry George
Melissa and Tim Griffy ’79 (B.A.; MAcc, 1980)
Kris and Richard McGee ’83 (B.A.)
Angela Minas ’86 (B.A.; MBA, 1987)
Debbie and Chris Patton ’92 (B.A.; MAcc, 1992)
Emily ’94 (B.A.; MAcc, 1995) and Kevin Rabbitt ’95 (B.A.)

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Fida Hussain is one of the newest members of Rice Business’s Professional Evening MBA Class of 2028. We asked him to share a little bit about himself and his experience starting the program. Here's what he had to say.

Tell us a little about your current career and background.

• Education: University of Houston — Electrical Power Engineering
• Most Recent Employer and Job Title: ERock — Project Engineer II

• Career Highlights and Industry Experience: My background is in electrical power engineering and project execution within the energy industry. Throughout my career, I have worked on technically complex projects that require close collaboration across engineering, design, operations and other business functions. Those experiences have strengthened my technical foundation while also giving me a greater appreciation for the strategy, leadership and commercial decisions that ultimately determine the success of a project.

  As I continue developing professionally, I want to build on my engineering experience and become a leader who can connect technical expertise with business strategy. I am especially interested in opportunities at the intersection of energy, technology and strategic decision-making, where I can help organizations solve complex problems and create long-term value.

What is a fun fact about you?

I love exploring new places around the world — especially discovering beautiful scenery, experiencing different cultures and trying amazing local food. Traveling gives me a chance to see life from new perspectives, and I’m always looking forward to the next destination.

Why did you choose Rice Business?

I chose Rice Business because I wanted an MBA experience that combined academic excellence with a collaborative community and strong connections to Houston's business ecosystem. Rice's strengths in energy, technology, entrepreneurship and leadership were especially attractive to me because they align closely with my professional interests and long-term goals.

What ultimately stood out, though, was the culture. I wanted to be part of a program where I could learn not only from professors, but also from classmates with different professional backgrounds, experiences and perspectives. Rice Business offered exactly that combination.

Why did you choose our Professional Evening MBA program?

I chose the Professional Evening MBA program because it gives me the opportunity to continue advancing my career while immediately applying what I learn in the classroom.

One of the things I value most about the program is the ability to connect my professional and academic experiences in real time. I can bring challenges and experiences from work into the classroom while taking new perspectives in strategy, finance, leadership and management back into my professional life. That combination makes the MBA experience especially meaningful to me.

How are you feeling about starting your MBA? What are you most looking forward to?

I’m incredibly excited about the journey ahead. My engineering background has taught me how to approach complex technical problems analytically, and I’m looking forward to developing the business, leadership and strategic skills that will allow me to approach challenges from an even broader perspective.

I’m especially looking forward to learning from my classmates, challenging myself outside of my comfort zone and building relationships with people whose experiences and perspectives are different from my own. Ultimately, I hope the MBA helps me grow from someone who contributes to successful projects into a leader who can help shape the broader direction of an organization.

How was your experience during Launch Week? What were your first impressions?

Launch Week reinforced why I chose Rice Business. What impressed me most was how quickly people from different industries, backgrounds, and experiences came together and began building a genuine community.

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My classmates are ambitious and accomplished, but they are also collaborative, approachable and willing to support one another. Being surrounded by people with such diverse experiences made me realize how much of the MBA experience will come from learning from each other.

I finished Launch Week feeling energized, grateful to be part of the Rice Business community and excited about everything the Class of 2028 will experience and accomplish together.

Fida Hussain is a Professional Evening MBA student in the Class of 2028.

Welcoming New Faculty

This summer, Rice Business welcomed two new tenure-track faculty members.

Yelin Hu, Assistant Professor of Accounting Hu received her Ph.D. in business administration (accounting) from the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business this past spring, where she instructed financial accounting courses. Hu focuses on theory-driven empirical research in accounting, examining how regulatory policies, organizational characteristics and firm behavior inform regulatory effectiveness and capital market outcomes.

Shannon Sciarappa, Assistant Professor of Management – Organizational Behavior Sciarappa joins Rice Business from Boston College’s Carroll School of Management, where she taught core management courses and completed her Ph.D. in organization studies. Sciarappa’s research uses qualitative methods to explore how individuals navigate and reshape their identities, views of work, and relationships in response to significant organizational or work-related events. This research primarily draws from theories of meaningful work and identity. In addition, several current faculty members assumed new academic and administrative leadership responsibilities, including Brian Rountree and Jefferson Duarte, who were both promoted to full professor. In addition, Nell Putnam-Farr was named assistant dean for academic programs, and Jon Miles has been promoted to associate clinical professor – organizational behavior. For more information, visit: business.rice.edu/new-faculty.

Celebrating Our Faculty

Yael Hochberg, the Ralph S. O’Connor Professor in Entrepreneurship – Finance, received a University Innovator Award at the 2026 Texas Innovation Awards held in Fort Worth, Texas. As head of Rice’s Entrepreneurship Initiative and the Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Hochberg embodies Rice Business’ leadership across innovation and entrepreneurship.

Diana Jue-Rajasingh, assistant professor of strategic management, was named to Poets& Quants’ list of “2026 Best 40-Under-40 Graduate Business Professors” in recognition of her high-level research, interactive classroom experience and mentorship.

Eduardo Salas and Daan van 
Knippenberg were ranked first and second, respectively, in a list of the “Top 20 Most Influential Authors in Team Effectiveness Between 1992 and 2022” by a comprehensive international review published in Small Group Research.

Faculty Awards

At the end of each school year, students from across programs recognize faculty for their educational impact.

Congratulations to the following faculty who received awards for their teaching excellence and groundbreaking research this spring.

Ph.D. Mentoring Awards:
Kerry Back
K. Ramesh

Teaching Awards:
Brian Akins
Bruce Carlin
Al Danto
Petrus Ferreira
James Hackett
Maura Claire Harford
Prashant Kale

Research Awards:
Bruce Carlin
Yael Hochberg
Diana Jue-Rajasingh
Suleyman Kerimov
Yiangos Papanastasiou
Alessandro Piazza
K. Ramesh

Dataset

5 Rankings in the Top 10

Rice Business earned five top-10 rankings in The Princeton Review’s 2027 business school rankings.

News and Events

The 2026 Alumni Reunion was full of networking, reconnecting and reminiscing, featuring a Lunch & Learn, Last Lecture, Alumni Awards, Partio and more. The following awards, established by the Rice Business Alumni Association, honor members of the community who embody the four pillars of alumni engagement: community, philanthropy, volunteering and lifelong learning.

Congratulations to our 2026 Alumni Award Winners:

Kenzel Fallen ’12
Distinguished Alumni Award

Javier Simons ’25
Rising Star Award

Robert Lesnick ’00
Outstanding Volunteer Award

Dean’s Distinguished Visiting Fellows

In April, the community welcomed two visiting faculty members to campus. James B. Wade, the Avram S. Tucker Endowed Professor of Strategy & Leadership at George Washington University, gave a seminar on “Adapting in the Shadow of Scandal: Reputational Management Strategies Among Perpetrator Coauthors in a High-Profile Academic Scandal”; and Katherine DeCelles, professor of organizational behavior and human resource management at the University of Toronto, spoke on “Coded Language in Job Advertisements.”

MBA@Rice Early Career Track Launch
The online MBA@Rice now offers an Early Career Track admissions pathway for early career professionals with fewer than three years of work experience. It will provide students with a strong foundation in their first year before they fully integrate into the broader MBA@Rice community in their second year. The first cohort started this fall.

Service to School Partnership
Rice Business launched a partnership with Service to School (S2S), a national nonprofit helping veterans and service members access higher education through free application counseling, mentorship and peer-to-peer support. S2S will help bolster support for military-affiliated students alongside existing networks like the Rice Business Veterans Association and Veterans Business Battle.

Commencement and Student Awards

In May, hundreds of Rice Business graduates crossed the stage, representing not only different programs, but vastly different experiences, industries and aspirations. Join us in welcoming each of our MBA, MAcc, doctoral and undergraduate students to the ranks of alumni.

This year’s honorees include MBA recipients of the M.A. Wright Award and Jones Scholar Award, as well as recipients of the Outstanding Student Award and Student Impact Award from the Virani Undergraduate School of Business. Visit our online magazine to view the full list of 2026 student award recipients.

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Lessons from China’s Short-Drama Boom 
March 13, 2026

In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Haiyang Li, the H. Joe Nelson III Professor of Management, examines how Chinese short-drama platforms have built an “emotion-first” business model that inverts Hollywood’s development logic. Rather than greenlighting expensive series upfront, as streaming platform Quibi did before collapsing, these firms test story concepts through hundreds of micro-ads and produce only the highest performers. Li and his co-authors argue the real lesson for managers isn’t about entertainment but rather about an operating system built on continuous experimentation, modular monetization and a core engine that travels across markets.

They close with four questions for business leaders in any sector to ask as they try to learn from the success of this new format: 
Are you designing for real usage contexts? 
Is experimentation your operating system or just a side project? 
Is your monetization stack modular? 
And — can your engine travel?

Harvard Business Review

How to Supercharge Tiny Businesses 
April 30, 2026

Research by Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Accounting K. Ramesh and alumni Marcela Aguilar (Ph.D. ’26) and Gary Lind (Ph.D. ’19) examines how accounting helps small businesses in developing countries secure credit. Drawing on International Labour Organization surveys of microenterprises in Central America and the Dominican Republic, the researchers found informal firms that kept systematic financial records were more likely to apply for bank loans and be approved. Even handwritten notebooks worked, provided owners separated business and personal money. The findings suggest recordkeeping quality, not legal registration alone, can open the door to financing.

“Structured recordkeeping plays a key role in how lenders evaluate informal businesses,” said Aguilar.

Chicago Booth

Lawmakers Press Credit Bureaus on “Buy Now, Pay Later”
May 6, 2026

Assistant Professor of Finance Benedict Guttman-Kenney weighs in on why “buy now, pay later” loans remain largely invisible on consumer credit reports. As four Senate Democrats press TransUnion, Equifax and Experian on how they handle the loans, most major pay-later lenders still withhold their data. Some cite fears the loans won’t be scored fairly. But Guttman-Kenney points to a competitive concern: credit bureaus sell customer data to other lenders, so reporting means risking rivals poaching your best borrowers. Fixing how scoring models classify these loans is the easier half of the problem.

Ensuring that credit scoring fairly classifies pay-later loans is a “technical problem” that’s solvable, says Guttman-Kenney. Persuading lenders to share their data “is a more fundamental problem.”

The New York Times

SpaceX is aiming for the world’s largest IPO. Texas communities could feel the impact for years.
May 21, 2026

Research by Jesse H. Jones Professor of Finance Alex Butler and Ph.D. alum Ioannis Spyridopoulos ’17 on how stock listings ripple through local economies gained new relevance in June 2026, when SpaceX raised $75 billion in the largest IPO ever. Butler and his co-authors found that each additional $10 million raised creates roughly 35 to 47 local jobs and up to 0.8 new businesses in the surrounding county. Prices for expensive homes within two miles of headquarters rise about $3,900.

The gains flow through early investors and employees who sell stock and spend locally, so the effect concentrates near a company’s home base — here, SpaceX’s Starbase, meaning Brownsville and other South Texas communities would absorb much of it.

Houston Chronicle

All-Inclusive Vs. A La Carte: Which Makes A Better Vacation? 
June 5, 2026

Marketing professor Utpal Dholakia argues that pay-as-you-go vacations may beat all-inclusive ones, at least sometimes.

His case rests on the “pain of paying,” the small sting that accompanies a visible transaction.

All-inclusive pricing eliminates that sting by design — but Dholakia notes the discomfort serves a purpose. A tab arriving with each cocktail prompts travelers to weigh whether they actually want the next one. Remove it and nothing signals a stopping point. While the Forbes author disagrees with Dholakia for most travelers, he acknowledges the satiation problem.

Forbes

Major Bank Advises Investors That the Market Is Near its Peak 
June 9, 2026

James Weston, the Harmon Whittington Professor of Finance, decodes Wall Street’s euphemisms in coverage of a Bank of America report advising investors to “take profits.” The phrase, Weston explains, means sell — analysts just soften it out of market etiquette. There’s a reason for the indirection:

“If you tell everyone to sell and everyone all sells at once, that triggers a market crash,” says Weston.

Weston also points to the fundamentals behind BofA’s caution, citing worsening consumer spending, rising consumer indebtedness and climbing oil prices. Other analysts counter that timing a market peak is notoriously difficult.

Marketplace

Ph.D. Alumni

2014
Alexander Chaudhry (Marketing) is associate dean and associate professor of business analytics at Southern Utah University’s Dixie L. Leavitt School of Business, where his research applies machine learning, causal inference, and natural-language, speech and video analytics to large-scale behavioral data on consumer engagement, social influence, pricing and advertising. His 2025 Journal of Interactive Marketing paper, “Community Gifting and Recipients’ Engagement with Peers and Influencers: Evidence from Natural Experiments on Twitch,” was selected as an AMA Research Insight. As associate dean, he authored the Leavitt School’s Quality Education strategic initiative on AI preparedness and designed ANLY 6510, a project-based graduate course on generative AI systems.

2016
Elizabeth (Lizzy) Berger (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance at the Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston, where she studies banking, economic growth and corporate finance. Recent work includes “Half Banked: The Economic Impact of Cash Management in the Marijuana Industry,” in the Journal of Finance.

Edwin Hu (Finance) is an associate professor of law at the University of Virginia School of Law, where his work brings empirical analysis to corporate and securities law, market structure and financial regulation. His current AI-related project uses large language models to study private placement memoranda, examining how disclosure and risk language varies across issuers in exempt offerings. Recent work includes “Regulatory Leakage Among Financial Advisors: Evidence from FINRA Regulation of ‘Bad’ Brokers” in the Journal of Financial Economics (2025). He received the John L. Weinberg/IRRCi Research Paper Award in 2025 and co-authored an amicus brief of securities-law scholars and former senior SEC officials before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Wei Shi (Strategy) is a professor of management and Cesarano Faculty Scholar at Miami Herbert Business School, University of Miami, where he studies how shareholders influence firms’ strategic decisions — work he is now distilling into a book on shareholder strategy, currently under contract. His recent research speaks directly to the AI moment: A study in Information Systems Research finds that media exposure of labor issues creates reputational pressure that pushes firms to invest in AI — primarily to automate high-skilled work rather than augment it, ultimately reducing future labor use.

Alberto Mokak Teguia (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business. His research brings understudied features of markets and human psychology — the market power of large institutional investors, the way investors revise their beliefs, the design of trading protocols — into otherwise standard asset pricing models, and traces the consequences for liquidity, prices and welfare. His paper “Granularity in Asset Markets” was conditionally accepted at the Journal of Finance this year. He is an elected member of the Finance Theory Group. He credits his time at Rice, and Kerry Back’s mentorship in particular, with shaping his path. His most recent milestone, he notes, is a personal one: He and his family welcomed twins in 2024.

Yang Wang (Marketing) is a principal economist at Amazon Ads Economics, promoted to that rank in 2025 after joining the company in 2022 following six years in academia (Temple 2019–2022, UTEP 2016–2019). His industry work sits close to the AI moment: He studies the economics of sales — territory assignment, segmentation, compensation, incrementality measurement — and is building AI-enabled digital twins to estimate B2B customer preferences. His academic research on how agency mergers reshape ad creative styles continues alongside the industry work. Recent publications include studies in Marketing Science (2022), Production and Operations Management (2023), the Journal of Interactive Marketing (2025) and Strategic Management Journal (2025).

Morad Zekhnini (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance at Michigan State University’s Eli Broad College of Business, where his research examines networks in finance. His paper “Publication Effect: Accelerating Anomalies” was recently accepted at the Journal of Financial Economics.

2017
Jonathan Bonham (Accounting) is an assistant professor of accounting at the University of Illinois Chicago. His research examines agency theory, executive compensation, corporate governance and contracting theory — much of it rooted in projects that began during his doctoral work at Rice.

Ioannis Spyridopoulos (Finance) was promoted this spring to associate professor of finance, with tenure, at American University’s Kogod School of Business in Washington, D.C. His research sits at the intersection of empirical banking, capital markets and financial networks, examining how lending relationships and market intermediation affect households, firms and the broader economy. Lately he has turned to AI: A grant from the Kroner and Koenigsberger Center for Financial Research at UC San Diego supports his project on AI-augmented strategic asset allocation using macro-financial narratives. Recent publications include studies in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis and Management Science.

Daniel Zyung (Strategy) is an associate professor of management and leadership at the University of Houston’s Bauer College of Business. His research examines CEOs from nearly every angle — their cognitive styles and firms’ AI adoption, boomerang CEOs and organizational turnarounds, and how boards respond when CEOs breach stakeholder rights, the subject of his solo-authored 2025 study in Organization Science. Another 2025 paper in the Journal of Management examines competition and constituents’ polarization online. In May, he appeared as a panelist at a Bauer symposium on AI, “Being Human in the Age of AI: Thriving in the Modern Workplace.”

2018
Colby D. Green (Strategy) became MBA director at Southern Utah University’s Dixie L. Leavitt School of Business on July 1, moving over from his role as associate dean; he is also an associate professor of strategic management. He is helping launch a new AI emphasis in SUU’s MBA program, where he will teach a new course, Strategy & Innovation with AI. Outside the classroom, he co-founded backincharge.com with his wife, board-certified child psychologist Dr. Kat Green, to expand access to evidence-based psychological care for children and teens.

Erik Mayer (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance and the John and Anne Oros Term Professor at University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Wisconsin School of Business, where his research spans household finance, financial intermediation and the intersection of finance and labor economics. His recent work studies how financial institutions shape economic mobility and opportunity in the U.S., often in collaboration with Rice colleagues. Publications include “Racial Disparities in the Auto Loan Market,” with Rice professors Alex Butler and James Weston, in Review of Financial Studies (2023); “The Impact of Minority Representation at Mortgage Lenders” in the Journal of Finance (2025); and “Government Litigation Risk and the Decline in Low-Income Mortgage Lending,” with fellow Rice Ph.D. alumni Billy Xu (’23) and Lawrence Zhao (’23), in the Journal of Financial Economics.

2019
Justin Balthrop (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where his research focuses on sports betting. His paper “Gambling Away Stability: Sports Betting’s Impact on Vulnerable Households” is forthcoming in the Journal of Financial Economics, and he holds a grant from 
Arnold Ventures.

Conor Callahan (Strategy) is an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Chicago’s Managerial Studies department. His work sits at the intersection of strategic leadership and the social evaluations of organizations, and includes three projects with Rice faculty currently under review at top management journals. He was recently invited to present at the Strategic Leadership Idea Development Event (SLIDE), where his research drew on generative AI to explore how AI deepfakes may shape stakeholder views of organizations.

Rafael Copat (Accounting) is an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Dallas’ Naveen Jindal School of Management. He studies corporate governance, with an emphasis on proxy advisers, shareholder voting, executive compensation and boards of directors. His study “Racial Diversity Exposure and Firm Responses Following the Murder of George Floyd” — co-authored with K. Ramesh, among others at Rice Business — appeared in the Journal of Accounting Research in 2023.

Toby Li (Strategy) is an assistant professor of strategy at Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School, where his research examines interorganizational governance — how firms structure contracts, incentives, monitoring and relational safeguards with suppliers and partners — and the unintended consequences those arrangements can produce, from environmental accidents to investment hazards and capability erosion. Much of his empirical work is set in the oil and gas drilling industry. His recent publications include a paper on resource idling and capability erosion in the Academy of Management Journal, and a second AMJ paper on how the pursuit of speed contributes to environmental accidents, now in press, which received a Best 
Paper Award from the Academy 
of Management.

Gary Lind (Accounting) received tenure in May at the University of Pittsburgh, where he is an associate professor of accounting. His research connects accounting and macroeconomics, with recent publications in Contemporary Accounting Research (2025), the Journal of Accounting Research (2026) and the Journal of Accounting and Economics (2026), the latter co-written with K. Ramesh and Marcela Aguilar (’26).

2020
Jonathan Bitting (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance at Appalachian State University’s Walker College of Business, in the department of finance, banking and insurance. His research focuses on agency issues, incentives, product markets and governance; he recently published “CEO Short-Term Incentives and the Agency Cost of Debt” in Contemporary Accounting Research (2025). This year brought a double distinction at Walker: first place in the Dean’s Club Research Prize and the Sywassink Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Zhuo (Emma) Chen (Strategy) is an assistant professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS). Her research examines technology innovation and entrepreneurship — including corporate venture capital, mergers and acquisitions, entrepreneurial finance, patent strategy and the strategic implications of artificial intelligence — with particular attention to how firms make innovation and investment decisions under uncertainty. Since joining CEIBS, she has published two papers in the Strategic Management Journal and presented at leading conferences, including the Academy of Management, Strategic Management Society and Strategy Science. She serves on the editorial review board of the Journal of Management.

Michael Dong (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance in Missouri State University’s Department of Finance, Economics, and Risk Management, and a Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis research fellow. His research spans litigation finance, financial markets, corporate finance, family office investments, and AI and big data, including a recent published paper on ChatGPT in finance 
and accounting.

Emmanuel Yimfor (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance at Columbia Business School, where he studies entrepreneurial finance, venture capital and private equity with a focus on discrimination and access in capital markets. Two recent papers are squarely on AI, including “Funding Black High-Growth Startups” in the Journal of Finance (2026), which uses image- and name-processing algorithms to determine that of the founders seeking VC funding represented in the researchers’ PitchBook sample, only 3.47% were Black. This year he took home the Yihong Xia Best Paper Award at the China International Conference in Finance and the Bradford-Osborne Research Award at the University of Washington Foster School of Business.

Rustam Zufarov (Accounting) is an assistant professor in the department of accounting at the University of Illinois Chicago College of Business Administration. His research examines innovation, government procurement and corporate financing, and he is a recent recipient of the prestigious American Accounting 
Association (AAA) Competitive Manuscript Award.

2021
Daniela De la Parra (Accounting) is an assistant professor of accounting at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, where her research examines corporate disclosure and accounting information. Her most recent paper was conditionally accepted at the Journal of Accounting and Economics this year.

Yessenia Tellez (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance at Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business, where her research focuses on household finance, banking, corporate finance and financial intermediation — studying how financial institutions and local economic conditions shape household outcomes and firm behavior, using large administrative and proprietary datasets. Her paper “Consumption Smoothing via Product Markets” is forthcoming in 
the Review of Corporate 
Finance Studies.

Hanyi Livia Yi (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance in the Seidner Department of Finance at Boston College Carroll School of Management, where she studies public finance, entrepreneurship and household finance. Her paper “Algorithmic Underwriting in High Risk Mortgage Markets,” co-authored with Rice Business professor David Zhang, is forthcoming in the Journal of Finance. Earlier work has appeared in the Journal of Financial Economics — on deputizing financial institutions to fight elder abuse (2023) and on the gig economy and new business formation (2022) — among other outlets. A two-time winner of the Carroll School’s Teaching Stars Award (2023, 2025), she also took home the best paper award at the 2024 Fintech & Financial Institutions Research Conference.

2022
Taehoon Im (Marketing) is an assistant professor of marketing at California State University, Northridge’s David Nazarian College of Business and Economics, where his research focuses on AI and sustainable marketing. He recently received a Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity Award from CSUN’s Division of Academic Affairs and was elected a faculty senator.

Yajing Li (Strategy) is an assistant professor in the management department at Lehigh University’s College of Business, where she studies entrepreneurship and innovation. Her study of independent directors on venture boards, co-authored with Sam Garg, appeared in the Journal of Business Venturing in 2025, and she is co-principal investigator on a UoM–CUHK joint research seed fund grant.

2023
Seyed Kazempour (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance at Louisiana State University’s E.J. Ourso College of Business. His research studies how information is produced, communicated and processed to form prices in financial markets; he uses various forms of AI — machine learning, textual analysis and large language models — to analyze financial data, most prominently social media. His work is published or forthcoming in the Journal of Finance and the Journal 
of Financial Economics.

Jenny (Yoon Jung) Kwon (Strategy) joined Temple University’s Fox School of Business as an assistant professor of management in July 2026. Her research examines innovation, corporate venture capital, incumbent-venture ties, the market for 
technology and the energy 
industry. A recent paper of hers 
is forthcoming in the Academy 
of Management Journal.

Xiao Liu (Accounting) is an assistant professor of accounting at Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business, where she studies banking, financial reporting, and the real effects of accounting standards and financial regulation. Recent work has extended into bank lending and loan loss provisioning, and she is currently examining how generative AI has affected the readability of corporate financial disclosures.

Billy Xu (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance at University of Rochester’s Simon Business School, working on consumer finance, mortgage lending and regulation. He recently placed two papers in the Journal of Financial Economics: “Government Litigation Risk and the Decline in Low-Income Mortgage Lending” and “Defunding Controversial Industries: Can Targeted Rationing Choke Firms?”

Lawrence Zhao (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance at Texas Tech University’s Rawls College of Business, with research interests in empirical corporate finance, household finance and financial intermediation. His most recent paper, “Government Litigation Risk and the Decline in Low-Income Mortgage Lending,” 
was published in the Journal 
of Financial Economics.

Yiying Zhu (Strategy) is an assistant professor of management at Montclair State University’s Feliciano School of Business, where she studies innovation, entrepreneurship, sustainability and social impact. Recent publications include “How Social Movements Catalyze Firm Innovation” in Organization Science (2025) and “Gender and Social Entrepreneurship Fundraising: A Mission Drift Perspective” in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes (2025).

2024
Patrick Blonien (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. His research explores market microstructure and market design — especially how trading mechanisms, trading hours, fragmentation and liquidity provision shape price discovery and allocative efficiency.

Sung Hun (Brian) Chung (Strategy) is an assistant professor of management at Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School, where his research focuses on strategic leadership, corporate governance, corporate activism, corporate scandal, and how firms and executives respond to social and institutional pressures. His article “Threading the Needle of Corporate Activism: How Firms Frame Their Stances on Polarizing Social Issues” was published in the Academy of Management Journal in 2025.

Geoffrey Pears (Accounting) is an assistant professor (lecturer) at University of Utah’s Eccles School of Business, where his research examines discrimination in mortgage lending, the enforcement of 
laws and corporate commitments to DEI.

2025
Zijun Liu (Accounting) is a visiting assistant professor of accounting at Texas Christian University’s Neeley School of Business, where his research examines managerial overconfidence in decision-making, financial reporting, voluntary disclosure, corporate governance and debt contracting. In January 2027 he will join the University of New South Wales’ School of Accounting, Auditing and Taxation as a lecturer in accounting.

Jose Torres (Accounting) is an assistant professor of accounting at INCAE Business School, teaching across the MBA, Executive MBA and executive education programs. His research focuses on banking and financial reporting — particularly how bank stakeholders acquire and use information — by examining the active monitoring role of depositors, information acquisition through regulatory disclosures, and how banks fold private forward-looking information into loan loss provisions under CECL.

David Nathaniel Wilson (Accounting) worked at Rice for a year as an instructor of accounting and acting director of the Rice Business Finance Center. This fall he begins as an assistant professor of instruction at Northwestern University’s Harvey Kapnick Center for Business Institutions. His research explores how information affects intraday trading dynamics, with a focus on institutional investors, market intermediation and market quality.

Anthony Zdrojewski (Finance) is an assistant professor of finance at Texas Christian University’s Neeley School of Business. In 2025 he received the Brattle Group Ph.D. Candidate Award for Outstanding Research at the WFA conference for his job market paper, which he also presented at the Lone Star Finance Conference and the Dallas Federal Reserve.

2026
Marcela Aguilar (Accounting) has joined the University of Chicago Booth School of Business as an assistant professor of accounting and James S. Kemper Faculty Scholar. Her paper “What Role Does Accounting Play in the Informal Economy?” co-authored with K. Ramesh and Gary Lind (’19), is forthcoming in the Journal of Accounting and Economics.

William Gonzalez (Accounting) has accepted a position as assistant professor in the James Benjamin Department of Accounting at Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School, beginning fall 2026. 
His research focuses on financial reporting, disclosure regulation and accounting standard setting.

Alexander Ober (Finance) was recently hired by Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management as a Donald P. Jacobs Scholar and assistant professor of finance. His research spans asset pricing, market microstructure and applications of AI to financial problems.

Xi Wang (Strategy) is an assistant professor of strategic management at the University of Texas at El Paso, where her research focuses on technology and innovation, platforms and ecosystems, and entrepreneurship. Her recent work is published in Academy of Management Proceedings and was presented at the 2026 Academy of Management Annual Meeting in Philadelphia.

Yifan Zhang (Finance) joins the University of Missouri’s Trulaske College of Business this fall as an assistant professor of finance, where he will teach international finance. His research focuses on market microstructure, asset pricing and empirical finance, with recent work on intraday return dynamics, market liquidity and investor expectations.

MBA and MAcc Alumni

1999
Jonathan Ha was promoted to senior director, leading neocloud business development at AMD, where he is driving the expansion of strategic neocloud partnerships and helping to accelerate growth across AMD’s data center GPU business.

2004
Ritesh Sheth recently became a certified yoga therapist (C-IAYT) and earned the highest level of certification from Yoga Alliance as an E-RYT 500. He is registered as a Yoga Alliance Continuing Education Provider (YACEP). He is serving as a full-time volunteer at The Art of Living Retreat Center in Boone, North Carolina. He is also volunteer-teaching at The Happiness Retreat and the Sacred Yoga Mountain Retreat. He is volunteering on the award-winning Shankara Ayurveda PanchaKarma detoxification program as an allopathic biometrics specialist. He hopes many will come to visit them at 4,000 feet in the Appalachian Mountains. “Namaste,” says Sheth.

2008
Mark Rudkin has been named director of marketing and communications at IM Houston, a nonprofit serving seniors through Meals on Wheels, refugees through resettlement services, faith communities through interfaith dialogue and residents seeking volunteer opportunities through Volunteer Houston. Rudkin previously held leadership roles at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business and the Houston Airport System.

2009
Tony Oguamanam recently graduated with a doctorate 
in business administration from the University of 
Houston. His research is in integrated-planning-budgeting-forecasting (IPBF). This research investigates whether an integrated planning, budgeting and forecasting process improves organizational financial performance.

2012
Mallory (Engler) Robins, co-founder and partner of internationally recognized interior design studio KOBEL + CO, recently was named to House Beautiful’s “Next Wave Class of 2026,” which recognizes designers shaping the future of the industry. The honor coincides with another exciting chapter for the firm: the grand opening of its new studio and showroom in Kansas City.

2019
Gavino Rivas is returning to Rice to join the space studies program after earning his Executive MBA from Rice in 2019. He is returning in celebration of his retirement after serving 24 years (in more than 30 countries), including two combat tours.

2020
Brooke Graham and her husband Wiley Graham welcomed a baby Owl in June 2026, Wiley Lucas Graham. Lucas is their second Owl, little brother to Wyatt Aaron Graham.

2021
Ben Clemenceau was recently promoted to senior 
manager-strategy at Accenture.

Brian Jackson is excited to share his engagement to Dr. Trace Matthews. Jackson proposed during a trip to Lanai, Hawaii, and the couple is looking forward to planning their wedding and beginning this next chapter together.

2022
Lynn Huang recently published a book, “Beyond Expectations: How Ordinary Choices Create Extraordinary Lives.” It is a reflective memoir about leadership, career, motherhood, reinvention and finding meaning beyond conventional definitions of success. Drawing on her journey across countries, cultures and leadership roles, the book explores how the expectations placed on us — and the expectations we place on ourselves — quietly shape our choices. One of the central ideas of the book is simple and eloquent: extraordinary lives are rarely built through extraordinary moments. They are built through ordinary choices, made with intention, every single day. Huang’s book is an invitation to pause, reflect and ask a deeper question: Are we building the life others expect, or the life we truly want?

2023
Olvin Hernández recently acquired Gulf Shade Structures, a Houston-based company that fabricates and installs custom commercial shade-sail canopy structures for car wash operators and other commercial clients across the country.

Madeleine Tunnard and her husband, Andrew Deavers, welcomed their first child, Theodore “Teddy” Thomas Deavers, on Feb. 18, 2026.

Ben Wang and Rebecca Wang welcomed baby Leo in August 2025, marking a joyful new chapter filled with love, growth and cherished moments as they begin this exciting journey together as a family.

2024
Gloria Samuels, a friend of Xavaier Olipahant, shared a wonderful photo of Oliphant and his beautiful bride Dorothy on their wedding day, May 16. “It was especially meaningful to see so many of his fellow Consortium classmates there to celebrate this special moment, including Andrew and Ashley Ward, Jasper Knight and Adrienne Miller, and Brandon Johnson and Anthony Sanchez Rodriguez,” says Samuels. “Rice brought this incredible community together, and moments like these remind them that the friendships and connections built there last far beyond graduation. Congratulations to the happy couple, and here’s to a lifetime of love and happiness!”

2025
Camrii (Alexcee) Alfaro has had a year of healing, love and forward motion. She completed treatment for Stage 3 cancer, married Agustin in August and continues creating smarter processes at a global, publicly traded renewable energy company. She is recovering, building and stepping into this next chapter with gratitude.

Katy Doan is global head of accounting and finance and program lead, PMO, at Varel Energy Solutions. She also serves as a fractional chief financial officer at Toptal, advising global clients on finance transformation and strategic reporting. Doan previously held senior leadership roles, including CFO of a $2B investment fund and controller at IES Residential. Beyond her corporate work, she is recognized as one of the youngest lecturers at Vietnam National University – High School for the Gifted, and continues to contribute as a trainer and public speaker in accounting, finance, project management and education. She is currently pursuing the CFA designation and preparing for a doctorate in law and education.

Tyler Sullivan recently was promoted to supply-chain director for Occidental’s Rockies Business Unit. The new role brought a move west, as Sullivan and his wife, Marie, relocated from Houston to Denver this summer. They are excited to make Colorado home and explore everything the Rockies have to offer.

2026
Felipe Lastra started as a consultant at EY-Parthenon. He is expecting a baby boy, due mid-September.

Marie Olavere recently relocated to New Jersey, where she has taken on a position as a grant fund manager at Princeton University.

Luis Torres, founder and CEO of Torres Orbital Mining, was selected for a NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 1 contract for the “non-ejective intake bit,” a sealed excavation architecture that collects lunar and planetary regolith samples without ejecting contaminating dust. The same approach targets hazardous silica dust exposure in terrestrial mining. The six-month effort is being carried out at Greentown Labs in Houston.

In Memoriam

H. Russell “Russ” Pitman ’58
1936–2026

H. Russell “Russ” Pitman ’58 died on April 10, 2026, at age 89. Pitman’s connection to Rice spans seven decades — first as a student, then as a staff member and ultimately as one of the university’s most generous benefactors. Just two years after graduating with double majors in business administration and economics, he returned to campus July 1, 1960, the very day Rice Institute became Rice University, to serve as the university’s chief accountant. From 1969 to 1976, he was assistant to President Norman Hackerman, then he became manager of business affairs in 1976. Pitman retired in 1980 after serving the university with distinction for two decades.

Pitman established more than 75 endowed funds, awarded over 50 planned gifts and made several more gifts to academic schools at Rice. He enabled the creation of scholarships, travel grants, lecture series, art purchases and faculty initiatives. He also contributed to the creation of Virani Hall — a staircase in the new building bears his name (see page 34) — as well as many other spaces across campus.

Pitman was awarded the Gold Medal from the Association of Rice Alumni in 2019. He also was awarded the Dean’s Medal from the School of Architecture in 2023, and in December 2024, he toured the new Academic Quadrangle with university leaders in a celebratory moment of his lifelong love of the institution.

Janice McNair 
1936–2026

Janice McNair, Houston Texans co-founder and senior chair, whose generosity, leadership and enduring commitment to education helped shape Rice University and Rice Business for generations, passed away on July 14, 2026. Alongside her husband, Bob, McNair believed deeply in the power of education to transform lives. Their extraordinary philanthropy touched countless institutions — largely in education and medical research — but few places reflect that legacy more visibly than McNair Hall, which has served as the home of Rice Business for more than two decades. The McNairs’ extraordinary generosity to Rice Business was recognized in 2005 with the naming of McNair Hall, a place where students, faculty and alumni have come together for more than two decades to learn, collaborate and lead. Bob and Janice McNair established the McNair Scholars program at Rice Business to fully cover tuition for an exceptional student each year.    

“Mom was exceptional. She exuded kindness, radiated joy, had an endless amount of hope and love, and lived an incredible life centered around faith, family, philanthropy and football,” said Cal McNair, Texans chair and CEO, in a statement. “…Mom leaves an indelible mark on our family, our team and our community and her giving spirit will always be embedded in the fabric of our organization. While I’m heartbroken, I take great comfort in knowing she is now reunited with my dad, her favorite teammate.”

Herbert D. Simons ’57 
1935—2026

Herbert Simons ’57, a prominent Houston attorney, oilman, civic leader, philanthropist and genealogist, passed away on Aug. 19, 2026, three days after celebrating his 91st birthday.

Simons had a long and distinguished career in law and was a nationally recognized expert in taxation. He joined the firm of Butler & Binion in 1962, and he served as partner there from 1973 until the firm’s closure in 1999. He was subsequently Of Counsel at Winstead PC until his retirement in 2007. He was, for many years, a member of the Board of Directors of XTO Energy, a leading independent oil and natural gas producer, which was acquired by ExxonMobil in 2010.

He received his law degree in 1960 from Harvard Law School. Simons served as a council member of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and the Houston Zoo, among other philanthropic and community interests. In memory of his father, he established the Verne F. Simons Memorial Scholarship at Rice and the Verne F. Simons Distinguished Assistant Professorship in Finance at Rice Business.

Simons was also a noted genealogist and family historian. He was also an enthusiastic traveler and enjoyed opera and politics. Simons will be remembered for his kindness, wit, boundless energy, the breadth of his intellect, his successful professional career, his devotion to the institutions and community of Houston, and his lifelong interest in the history of his family and the families of early America.

Picture a chief strategy officer who returns from vacation to find that the CEO, in her absence, had an intern run the company’s strategic analysis through Claude. It comes back with industry trends, competitor profiles, market summaries and a set of initiatives with implementation metrics attached. The work is completed in a fraction of the time. It would normally take her team weeks. The scenario Mittal and Piazza pose at the start of their new paper is no longer far-fetched. In a survey of 7,000 professionals, 87% of senior executives reported using AI on the job, compared with 27% of frontline employees. Can a chief strategy officer survive a tool that does the work faster and at comparable quality?

Professors Mittal and Piazza discuss their findings.

What can generative AI already do that used to belong to the chief strategy officer?

AP: The CSO typically wears seven hats: the advisor, the monitor, the dealmaker, the implementer-in-chief, the chief of staff, the special projects leader, the thinker, muse and futurist. If you look closely at the daily work inside those roles, much of it is precisely what large language models (LLMs) are good at: gathering information, summarizing it, synthesizing it and fitting it into an established framework. The advisor and monitor roles are especially vulnerable. The thinker, muse and futurist are the least exposed because they require judgment about futures that current information alone cannot settle. The dealmaker and the chief of staff are harder to automate, because they run on negotiation, relationships and political judgment.

VM: We wanted to know how far this had gone in practice, so we talked with 20 CEOs and strategy officers at 11 companies valued between $10 million and $100 billion. We also sat in on their planning meetings and strategy retreats. Every single company was using gen AI for strategy work. All the executives reported using it to apply frameworks such as SWOT. Ninety-five percent used it for market trend analysis, 90% competitor analysis and 80% financial projections. Ninety percent of the executives told us they expected major parts of the strategy officer’s role, as currently configured, to be replaced. One CEO said their strategy officer used to sit in every high-level meeting, abstracting insights and action priorities, and now an AI tool summarizes the meeting and drafts the priorities.

So is AI replacing the CSO position?

VM: The more uncomfortable question is, what exactly is being replaced? The link between strategy planning and financial performance has always been much weaker than executives assume. An analysis cited in our paper examined 717 published correlations. In that analysis, strategic planning showed a zero or negative correlation with financial outcomes 79% of the time. A separate analysis found 43% of executives doubtful about the effectiveness of their own company’s strategy. One of the CEOs we interviewed said that for the resources his company puts into strategy, the financial return is questionable.

AP: The technology also has limits. Take information synthesis, for example. AI can synthesize quickly, but a lot of what it returns is what we would call “trendslop”: generic summaries that read well and say very little. Automating synthesis does not answer the question a CEO actually has: Which of our strategic initiatives are creating a lift in customer value and which are draining resources? That’s a question of inference, and synthesis is not inference.

What does that leave for the chief strategy officer?

VM: A generative AI summary alone cannot establish which inputs drive a specific outcome, such as customer value. Forty years of studies show a strong association between customer value and outcomes ranging from retention and pricing power to gross margin and firm value. But you have to identify the specific drivers, and that requires company-specific data and statistical modeling, which can be supported by analytical AI. We worked with the strategy officer at a large manufacturer whose team had been scraping competitor websites and buying market sizing reports. The chief commercial officer told us the group produced binder after binder on competitors, and still had no idea what their own customers valued. The model we built with them showed that a one-point increase in customer value was associated with a $936,000 increase in annual sales and a 2.1% increase in gross margin. Of the 87 possible drivers, 12 accounted for more than 90% of the lift in customer value.

AP: And then the executive team has to decide what to do with that. In that case, they chose three drivers to excel on: acknowledging customer problems within an hour, keeping customers informed during the resolution process and resolving problems to the customer’s complete satisfaction. Over the next three quarters, the company reached 91%, 98% and 87% on those goals, respectively, and improved its sales and margins relative to its peers.

VM: In that arrangement, the strategy officer’s authority changes character. It no longer rests on persuading colleagues that she has sound judgment but rather on owning the strategic model built on science, and on being able to say whether an initiative is still earning its place as a priority.

AP: The CSO owns the model, but the executive team jointly owns the conclusions. The CFO interrogates the choice of outcome variables. The COO asks whether the high-lift drivers are operationally manageable. Everyone signs off on trade-offs. In our experience, the longest part of this work is building the capacity of operating executives to act on what the model says, which tends to be a multiyear project rather than a communications exercise.

VM: In short, CEOs already have tools that summarize the market. But they still need someone who can tell them, with evidence, which of their initiatives is actually working.

Recent power outages and the surge in AI-driven computing have made data center siting decisions more consequential than ever, especially as energy and water constraints tighten. Communities invest public dollars on the promise of jobs and growth, while firms weigh long-term commitments to land, power and connectivity. Against that evolving backdrop, a critical question comes into focus: Where do data centers get built — and what actually drives those decisions?

A new study by Tommy Pan Fang (Rice Business) and Shane Greenstein (Harvard Business School) provides the first large-scale statistical analysis of data center location strategies across the United States. It offers policymakers and firms a clearer starting point for understanding how different types of data centers respond to economic and strategic incentives.

Published in the journal Strategy Science, the study examines two major types of infrastructure: third-party colocation centers that lease server space to multiple firms, and hyperscale cloud centers owned by providers like Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

“The cloud feels weightless,” Pan Fang says, “but it rests on real choices about land, power and proximity.”

What are the two main data center location strategies?

The study draws on pre- pandemic data from 2018 and 2019, a period of relative geographic stability in supply and demand. This window gives researchers a clean baseline before remote work, AI demand and new infrastructure pressures began reshaping internet traffic patterns.

The findings show that data centers follow a bifurcated geography: Third-party centers cluster in dense urban markets, where buyers prioritize proximity to customers despite higher land and operating costs. Cloud providers, by contrast, concentrate massive sites in a small number of lower-density regions, where electricity, land and construction are cheaper and economies of scale are easier to achieve. Third-party data centers, in other words, follow demand. They locate in urban markets where firms in finance, healthcare and IT value low latency, secure storage and compliance with regulatory standards.

Using county-level data, the researchers modeled how population density, industry mix and operating costs predict where new centers enter. Every U.S. metro with more than 700,000 residents had at least one third-party provider, while many mid-sized cities had none.

This pattern challenges common assumptions. Third-party facilities are more distributed across urban America than prevailing narratives suggest.

“For industries where speed is everything, being too far from the physical infrastructure can meaningfully affect performance and risk,” Pan Fang says. “Proximity isn’t optional for sectors that can’t absorb delay.”

In critical operations, even slight pauses can have real consequences. For hospital systems, lag can affect performance and risk exposure. And in high-frequency trading, milliseconds can determine whether value is captured or lost in a transaction.

Why does distance matter for cloud data center costs?

For cloud providers, the picture looks very different. Their decisions follow a logic shaped primarily by cost and scale. Because cloud services can be delivered from afar, firms tend to build enormous sites in low-density regions where power is cheap and land is abundant.

These facilities can draw hundreds of megawatts of electricity and operate with far fewer employees than urban centers. “The cloud can serve almost anywhere,” Pan Fang says, “so location is a question of cost before geography.”

The study finds that cloud infrastructure clusters around network backbones and energy economics, not talent pools. Well-known hubs like Ashburn, Virginia — often called “Data Center Alley” — reflect this logic, having benefited from early network infrastructure that made them natural convergence points for digital traffic.

Local governments often try to lure data centers with tax incentives, betting they will create high-tech jobs. But the study suggests other factors matter more to cloud providers, including construction costs, network connectivity and access to reliable, affordable electricity.

When cloud centers need a local presence, distance can sometimes become a constraint. Providers often address this by working alongside third-party operators. “Third-party centers can complement cloud firms when they need a foothold closer to customers,” Pan Fang says.

That hybrid pattern — massive regional hubs complementing strategic colocation — may define the next phase of data center growth.

Looking ahead, shifts in remote work, climate resilience, energy prices and AI-driven computing may reshape where new facilities go. Some workloads may move closer to users, while others may consolidate into large rural hubs. Emerging data-sovereignty rules could also redirect investment beyond the United States.