Top Finance Graduate Award 2025 at HEC Paris

HEC Paris is proud to host the 2025 Top Finance Graduate Award Conference on 6 May 2025. This award recognizes the most promising PhD candidates in financial economics worldwide, graduating in 2025. The scientific committee selects the candidates with the greatest promise to have a long-term impact on our understanding of finance, regardless of their field of study. This award has been hosted since 2023 at HEC Paris and is the successor to the AQR Top Finance Graduate Award, hosted between 2013 and 2022 at Copenhagen Business School.

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE SIX WINNERS OF 2025!

In randomized order:

Daniel Graves: PhD candidate in Economics at Yale University
Susan Cherry: PhD candidate in Finance at Stanford Graduate School of Business
Suproteem Sarkar: PhD candidate in Economics at Harvard University
Juan Antolin-Diaz: PhD candidate in Economics at the London Business School
James Paron: PhD candidate in Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Leonardo d'Amico: PhD candidate in Economics at Harvard University

Daniel Graves

Daniel Graves is a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at Yale University. His research focuses on studying investor beliefs, attention, and information, as well as on leveraging high-frequency datasets to answer questions in financial economics. Prior to attending Yale for graduate school, Daniel received a simultaneous Bachelor's/Master's degree in Economics from Yale University and ran a derivatives trading firm.

Susan Cherry

Susan Cherry is a PhD candidate in Finance at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Her research examines how financial regulation and lender technologies shape credit supply to traditionally underserved borrowers. Before Stanford, she worked as a research assistant at Columbia Business School and earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Denison University. In July 2025, she will join UT Austin as an Assistant Professor of Finance.

Suproteem Sarkar

Suproteem Sarkar is a PhD candidate in economics at Harvard University. His research covers topics in finance, behavioral economics, and the economics of technology and innovation. He is interested in using machine learning and computation to advance scientific inquiry. Previously, Suproteem completed degrees in computer science and applied mathematics at Harvard, and spent time at Microsoft and Google. In 2025, he will join the University of Chicago Booth School of Business as an Assistant Professor of Finance and Applied AI.

Juan Antolin-Diaz

Juan Antolin-Diaz is a PhD candidate in economics at the London Business School since 2018. His research interests are in asset pricing, macroeconomics, and time series econometrics. He has published research in journals including the American Economic Review, The Journal of Econometrics, and the Journal of Monetary Economics. Prior to joining LBS, Juan worked at Fulcrum Asset Management and the European Central Bank. 

James Paron

James Paron is a finance Ph.D. candidate at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he also received a B.S. in Economics. His research is in asset pricing, macroeconomics, and household finance, with a focus on how firm and household heterogeneity shape the macroeconomy. In July 2025, he will join Stanford GSB.

Leonardo D'Amico

Leonardo D'Amico is a PhD candidate in Economics at Harvard University. His research focuses on finance, macroeconomics, and spatial economics; and has been covered by The New York Times, VoxEU, and Il Sole 24 Ore. In 2021-2022, he worked as a junior economist in the staff of the Prime Minister of Italy, Mario Draghi. Prior to Harvard, he received a MSc and a BSc degree in Economics from Bocconi University. 

The winners will share a cash prize of 10.000 USD and present their research at HEC Paris on May 6, 2025.
 
Selection procedure: The selection committee and all previous winners of the Top Finance Graduate Award were invited to nominate candidates for the award. The committee discussed individually all the nominees and made a final selection of six winners. Note that candidates cannot apply for this award.

Selection Committee :

•    Jean-Edouard Colliard (co-chair), HEC Paris
•    Darrell Duffie, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business
•    Steven Kaplan, University of Chicago Booth School of Business
•    Augustin Landier (co-chair), HEC Paris
•    Toby Moskowitz, Yale University, School of Management
•    Anna Pavlova, London Business School
•    David S. Scharfstein, Harvard Business School
•    David Thesmar, MIT Sloan School of Management

Registration is by invitation only. Please write to colliard@hec.fr if you would like to attend this event. The detailed program is available here.