Prior to joining GSU in August 2014, she was on the faculty at the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland and spent a year as a visiting assistant professor at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. Her research interests lie in the areas of corporate governance, executive compensation, mergers and acquisitions, capital structure, and innovation. Her papers have been published in the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, and Journal of Applied Corporate Finance. Her work on corporate cash holdings and intangible capital has received the Best Paper Award in Corporate Finance at the Western Finance Association Meetings in 2013. Professor Kadyrzhanova earned a B.A. in economics from Bryn Mawr College and a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University.