Jingran Zhao is an associate professor in Accounting at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She joined School of Accounting and Finance as an assistant professor in 2015 upon the completion of her PhD at Emory University. Prof. Zhao was then promoted to associate professor in 2022 with tenure. In 2026, Prof. Zhao founded PolyU Quant Cloud AI Center for Accounting and Finance with industry donation from Capital Finance Holdings Ltd..

Prof. Zhao taught two subjects at PolyU: Management Accounting I (undergraduate level) and Data Analytics in Accounting and Finance (both undergraduate and postgraduate level). She is ranked in the top 10% by students for outstanding teaching performance university-wide. She has also won the award for Outstanding Achievement in teaching at the Faculty of Business and at the School of Accounting and Finance. In addition to teaching in the traditional classroom, Prof. Zhao also developed a massive online open class (MOOC) for a subject called "Data Analytics in Accounting and Finance". 

Prof. Zhao’s research focuses on how investors use information from various sources to make investment decisions. These information sources include mandatory disclosure, voluntary disclosure, information intermediaries (e.g., analysts and news media), and social media (e.g., Twitter). She has published in the top tier academic journals, such as Journal of Accounting and Economics. She has also published papers in international business examining how multinational enterprises strategically adapt to the fast evolving institutional environments.