New Faculty (2015/16)

Dr. Wen Chen joined the AC Department in August 2015. She grew up in Tianjin, and attended Beijing University, earning a B.S in Human Resource Management and one in Statistics. After graduation, she joined the KPMG Huazhen Beijing office and worked as an auditor for three years. She then attended the University of Minnesota and completed her Ph.D. in business administration, specializing in accounting. Her research interests include financial markets, market microstructures, financial reporting and disclosure, and corporate governance. At present, she is teaching Financial Accounting in the Ph.D. programme and Financial Management.

In addition to her teaching duties and departmental service, Dr. Wen Chen will complement and expand her existing research with ongoing research. Her ultimate career goal is to contribute to both academic accounting research and the professional accounting community. She believes the generous research support, talented colleagues, and collegiate atmosphere in the Department will certainly help her a great deal in achieving her goal.

Dr. Alex Zhang grew up in a small ocean city called Qinhuangdao. Later, he left home for Shanghai and obtained his Bachelor’s degree in international trade at East China Normal University. Then he received his Master’s degree in accounting from the College of William and Mary, and his Ph.D. in accounting from the University of Alberta. In January 2016, Alex joined CityU as an Assistant Professor.

Dr. Zhang believes that CityU has a very friendly and productive accounting group, and he really likes the superb research environment here. He has learned much from his colleagues in research, teaching and scholarly life.

Dr. Zhang teaches Financial Accounting. To him, accounting education opens a window for students to understand the business world. He urges students to look beyond the grade and stay alert to recent industry events. Although teaching accounting is much like teaching grammar, he encourages students to understand the rationale behind each rule.

During his leisure time, he likes reading, running and swimming.

Dr. Zilong Zhang grew up in Shandong province, China. He attended Beijing University and studied Economics. He obtained a Master’s Degree in Economics at National University of Singapore with a thesis focusing on game theory. Dr. Zhang received his Ph.D. in Finance from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His doctoral research focused on corporate finance, including debt markets, corporate governance and mergers and acquisitions.

Dr. Zhang joined the AC Department in January 2016. He enjoys working with his colleagues, discussing various topics in areas including accounting, economics and finance. He hopes to apply his expertise in microeconomics and finance to accounting research. He is also enthusiastic about teaching undergraduate students. He thinks that independent and critical thinking is the most important ability that university students should acquire upon graduation.

In his spare time, Dr. Zhang likes playing basketball, hiking, reading science fiction, watching movies, and painting. He is also a big fan of Lego.