Press Releases Chicago Booth’s Wenxin Du Named 2021 Sloan Research Fellow
The associate professor of finance will use the grant to expand her research efforts on global dollar funding markets
- February 15, 2021
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation today announced that it has selected Wenxin Du, associate professor of finance and Fama Faculty Fellow at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, to receive a 2021 Sloan Research Fellowship.
Awarded annually since 1955, the Sloan Research Fellowship Program recognizes and rewards outstanding early-career faculty who have the potential to revolutionize their fields of study. More than 1,000 researchers are nominated each year for 128 prestigious fellowship slots in eight scientific and technical fields: chemistry, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, computer science, Earth system science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience, and physics. Winners receive a two-year, $75,000 fellowship which can be spent to advance the fellow’s research.
Du, who is also a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a research affiliate at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, plans to use the grant to expand her research efforts on global dollar funding markets.
“My current research agenda started in a rather esoteric corner of the foreign exchange markets called covered interest rate parity deviation,” said Du. “I am quite proud that I have transformed this esoteric corner into a closely watched barometer for global capital markets. The Sloan Research Fellowship gives further credibility that this line of research is not a niche topic but is, in fact, an area of broad interest and relevance.”
In order to qualify for a fellowship, candidates must first be nominated by a department head or senior researcher. Ralph S. J. Koijen, the AQR Capital Management Distinguished Service Professor of Finance and a Fama Faculty Fellow, nominated Du.
“Professor Du is an exceptionally talented and influential researcher,” said Koijen. “For the questions Wenxin explores, it is essential to get the details of the institutional setting right. She has a unique talent for combining exceptional empirical skills with detailed institutional knowledge.”
The fellowship is the latest of several top academic awards Du has received for her research, including the Amundi Pioneer First Prize and AQR Insight Award Top Prize. Her findings have been published in leading academic journals and featured in Bloomberg, Financial Times, The Economist, and The Wall Street Journal. She also serves as an associate editor at the Journal of International Economics.
Prior to joining Booth, Du was a principal economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and a central bank research fellow at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland.
She earned both an A.M. and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University, and a B.A. in economics and mathematics from Swarthmore College, with highest honors.
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