Smith Research Excellence Awards
New Researcher Achievement Award
The primary goal of the annual New Researcher Achievement Award is the recognition of an individual faculty member whose research during the pre-tenure period is acknowledged as outstanding, and has brought credit to Smith School of Business. Receipt of this award will encourage ongoing research that will continue to appear in high quality academic publications.
Murray Lei
The New Researcher Achievement Award recognizes the work of a pre-tenure faculty member. Murray Lei, 2022 recipient, joined the Smith faculty in 2018 and is an assistant professor of management analytics.
He studies revenue and supply chain management to solve real-world problems in retail and on-demand service platforms. More recently, he says, “I’ve become interested in understanding how to better align data-driven analytics with societal values, especially privacy, fairness and sustainability.”
Murray has had his work published in the top journals in his area including both Operations Research (FT50) and Manufacturing and Service Operations Management (FT 50). Murray's most recent paper is called, ‘Joint Product Framing (Display, Ranking, Pricing) and Order Fulfilment under the MNL Model for E-Commerce Retailers’ and appears in Manufacturing and Service Operations Management.
Award for Research Excellence
The primary goal of the annual Award for Research Excellence is the recognition of an individual faculty member whose research is acknowledged as outstanding, and has brought considerable credit to Smith School of Business. Receipt of this award will result in ongoing research that will continue to appear in high quality academic publications.
Pierre Chaigneau
Pierre Chaigneau, recipient of the Award for Research Excellence, is the Commerce'77 Fellow of Finance. He studies the use of information in corporate finance and governance systems.
“I find it especially interesting to study how different types of information—for example, market measures of performance versus soft information generated within the firm—will be used, and their combination into a corporate governance system,” he says.
His papers on executive compensation and the informativeness of performance signals have been published in the top journals in finance, management, and accounting including, Journal of Finance (FT50), Review of Financial Studies (FT50), Journal of Management (FT50), Journal of Accounting Research (FT50), and Journal of Financial Economics (FT50). His paper in the Journal of Accounting Research compared “hard information” (or measurable metrics such as financial data) with “soft information” (such as monitoring of management by the board and equity market analysts). Chaigneau and his co-author wanted to know whether or not the two types of information complement each other in a way that helps firms gauge managerial performance.
New PhD Student Research Excellence Award
The purpose of the New PhD Student Research Excellence Award is to recognize an individual PhD student whose pre-comprehensive exam academic progress and demonstrated research potential are acknowledged as outstanding, as guided by the vision for the PhD program.
Michaela Scanlon
Michaela Scanlon, MSc’21, PhD’26, winner of the New PhD Student Research Excellence Award, studies mental health stigma and leadership at work. “I hope to contribute to a deeper understanding of stigma in the workplace and the fight to normalize mental illness,” she says.
A paper she co-wrote with Professor Julian Barling (her supervisor) that’s out for review with the Journal of Applied Psychology explores the effects of bottom-up mental health stigma for followers.
“Across two studies we found that when followers stigmatize leaders who are experiencing mental illness, it has consequences for their own motivation and performance,” she says.
Antoine Grenier Ouimet
Antoine Grenier Ouimet, PhD’25, also won the New PhD Student Research Excellence Award. He studies the effects of computing advances on humans and their ability to act effectively.
An example of his work is an International Conference on Information Systems paper that he wrote with Professor Shamel Addas (one of his two supervisors; the other is Professor Jane Webster). In it, they identified key dimensions to understand the emergence of outcomes when studying or implementing human-machine configurations for decision-making.
“Such research is critical as new algorithmic systems have become autonomous agents that learn from, collaborate with, and even manage humans, and we are just starting to understand the implications of this,” he says.
PhD Student Research Excellence Award
The purpose of the PhD Student Research Excellence Award is to recognize an individual PhD student whose academic progress and demonstrated research potential during the post-comprehensive exam stage of the PhD program are acknowledged as outstanding, as guided by the vision for the PhD program.
Neal Willcott
Neal Willcott, PhD’23, winner of the PhD Student Research Excellence Award, works in sustainable finance, studying the effect of climate policy and disclosures on macroeconomic and firm-level outcomes.
A paper he wrote last year with Professor Sean Cleary (his supervisor), examined the cost of delaying Canada’s investment toward a net-zero, green economy. They found that the physical damages of climate change down the road will be more costly than making appropriate investments in climate mitigation today.
“My research is very interesting because of its relevance to the academic community and the general public,” Willcott says. “Everyone wants to talk about climate change and the economy because it influences our everyday lives.”
Smith Graduate Supervision Award
This award recognizes a faculty member whose contributions to graduate supervision have inspired students and contributed meaningfully to their learning. Other criteria include: inspiring students’ commitment to, and involvement in, research; mentoring; and providing leadership in students’ career development.
Lynnette Purda
The Research Supervision Award is open to all faculty who supervised Smith PhD or MSc students for three or more years during the past five years. After she won, Lynnette Purda learned that both her current students and graduates from the last five years had written to support her nomination. “That’s completely overwhelming to me—that all of them came together to do this. It makes me extremely grateful for the wonderful colleagues that they’ve become,” she says.
Purda, who is the RBC Fellow of Finance, says she enjoys working with graduate students because of the energy they bring to their work. “They see everything from a fresh perspective and this helps sustain my own creativity and enthusiasm.”
Dimitri Hadjistavropoulos, MSc’22, PhD’27, says Purda takes great care in helping students develop as academics. “She works closely and consistently with us on every step of the research process,” he says. “And she’s very supportive with course work, making sure that we always have the necessary support to balance course work with research.” She has also encouraged many of her students to challenge themselves by presenting ongoing work at conferences or seminars, he adds.