Jian Hu
Jian completed her Ph.D. under the supervision of Professor Tom Fomby in 2010. Since then he has had a very successful career in industry. Prior to joining SMU, he received his master’s degree from Stockholm School of Economics in Sweden and a bachelor’s degree from Nankai University in China.
Upon graduating with his PhD, Jian began his career in modelling and analytics with Fannie Mae in Washington DC. He is now an Executive Director and the Head of Macroeconomic Forecasting at Morgan Stanley where he builds and manages a team of quantitative analysts and financial engineers. He is responsible for designing macroeconomic scenarios, developing econometric models, presenting and explaining economic and financial forecasts to senior executives, managing relationships with key stakeholders, and providing guidance to technology infrastructure projects supporting macroeconomic forecasting, stress testing and quantitative risk management processes. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley he worked at UBS where he was an Executive Director and built out a successful business forecasting and modelling team for Wealth Management Americas. He was also a Director for credit analytics at Moody’s Analytics where he led a team of economists and quantitative processionals in helping financial institutions develop and validate credit risk and stress testing models.
Jian has maintained his connection with research by publishing in the areas of structured finance and financial markets and presenting at major industrial and academic conferences. Jian has also furthered his industry credential by becoming a CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) and certified FRM (Financial Risk Manager).
The PhD program was intellectually challenging and academically rigorous, and both faculty and administrative staff were quite supportive. As an international student, I found their strong and generous support crucial in helping me adapt to a new environment personally and academically.
Both senior and junior faculty members were very productive in research and maintained good relationships with other universities, central banks, and research institutions. The economics department organized a weekly seminar series where I learned a great deal of cutting-edge research first-hand from top scholars at leading universities around the world.
Every student was provided with an office cubicle, where you could complete your assignments or work on your research independently. The best part in the office space was a conference room for exclusive use by PhD students, where you could interact with your peers in a non-classroom setting. This created a friendly and cooperative research atmosphere for all graduate students across years to have in-depth academic discussions, connect seemingly unrelated concepts, explore novel research ideas, and collaborate on research projects.