Top Finance Graduate Award 2026 at HEC Paris

HEC Paris is proud to host the 2026 Top Finance Graduate Award Conference on 5 May 2026. This award recognizes the most promising PhD candidates in financial economics worldwide, graduating in 2026. 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 2026!

In randomized order:

Nicolas Hommel: PhD candidate in Economics at Princeton University
Ananya Kotia: PhD candidate in Finance at the London School of Economics
Jessica Li: PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business
Patrick Adams: PhD candidate in Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management
Oliver Xie: PhD candidate in Finance at Stanford University
Sage Belz: PhD candidate in Economics at Harvard University

Nicolas Hommel

Nicolas Hommel is a PhD candidate in economics at Princeton University. His research intersects corporate finance, international economics, and macro-finance. Before Princeton, he received a Master's degree in Management from HEC Paris and a Master's degree in Economics from ENSAE Paristech.

Ananya Kotia

Ananya Kotia is a PhD candidate in the Department of Economics at the London School of Economics. His research lies at the intersection of development economics, finance, and trade. He is also the Founder and Director of the India Data Lab Initiative (IDLI), an open-source platform that harmonizes unit-level firm and household survey data from India. He will join the Stanford Graduate School of Business as an Assistant Professor in August 2027, following a one-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). 

Jessica Li 

Jessica Li is a PhD candidate in Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Her research combines theoretical and empirical approaches to study how interactions among financial institutions - and the frictions that shape these interactions - affect financial contracts, market outcomes, and the broader economy. Prior to her PhD, Jessica spent nearly a decade in the financial industry, including founding and running a Toronto-based hedge fund specializing in credit arbitrage strategies. She will join Harvard Business School as an Assistant Professor of Finance in July 2026.

Patrick Adams

Patrick Adams is a PhD candidate in Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management. His research focuses on asset pricing, household finance, and international finance, often leveraging large administrative datasets. Prior to attending MIT, he completed his bachelor’s degree at the University of Connecticut and worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In July 2026, he will join the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Oliver Xie

Oliver Xie is a PhD candidate in Finance at Stanford University. His research is in international economics and finance, and macro finance. He is interested in studying how firms navigate international currency markets to lower their cost of capital and facilitate international trade. Previously, Oliver completed degrees in economics and mathematics at the University of Chicago, and worked at AQR Capital Management as a quantitative researcher. In 2026, he will join MIT Sloan as an Assistant Professor of Finance. 

Sage Belz

Sage Belz is a Ph.D. candidate in Business Economics at Harvard University. Her research focuses on international finance and macroeconomics. Prior to joining Harvard, she worked at the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution and earned a B.A. in Economics from Covenant College.

The winners will share a cash prize of 10.000 USD and present their research at HEC Paris on May 5, 2026.

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
Samuel Hanson, Harvard Business School
Benjamin Hébert, Stanford University
Steven Kaplan, University of Chicago Booth School of Business
Augustin Landier (co-chair), HEC Paris
Song Ma, Yale School of Management
Yiming Ma, Columbia 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.