PhD Students 

I have proudly supervised to completion a handful of PhD students from various Australian universities. I currently have one PhD student who is in progress, with three having recently submitted their thesis for examination. 

Suranga Perera
University of Wollongong (transferred from UNSW)

Status: Examination reports received and under revision  

Supervision Team: Amir Arjomandi, Searat Ali  

Suranga's research uses granular airline booking data to proxy for travellor expectations of the COVID-19 pandemic recovery, and finds that the NSW COVID-19 restrictions - over time and inconjunction witn the seveirty of the pandemic - had a significant impact on expectations to recovery over various time horizons. This study is the first to exploit granular airline booking to uncover travellor expectations of a shock recovery.

Suranga began his PhD at UNSW Aviation with me, and transferred over to the University of Wollongong in 2020 when I moved over. I first met Suranga when he was completing his Masters of Science (Aviation Management) degree at UNSW. 

Outputs:  
Perera, S., & Tan, D. (2019). In search of the “Right Price” for air travel: First steps towards estimating granular price-demand elasticity. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 130, 557–569. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2019.09.013

Yun Maung
University of Wollongong

Status: Examination reports received and under revision  

Supervision Team: Amir Arjomandi, Ian Douglas  

Yun's thesis examines airline efficiency using DEA analysis. She examines the impact of airline efficiency, geopolitical risk, and economic policy uncertainty on firm outcomes (financial performance and default). Yun employs the dynamic system GMM model and finds that - largely - airline efficiency has little impact on its financial outcomes; supportive of the equilibrium theory of financial outcomes where airline efficiency and other firm characteristics are endogenously determined. Yun is currently an academic at Swinburne University, Melbourne.

Yun began her research training with Ian and myself at UNSW Aviation as an Honours student. She then began her PhD at the University of Wollongong in 2020.   

Muhammad Saleem
University of Wollongong

Status: Examination reports received and under revision  

Supervision Team: Searat Ali, Abdullah Al Mamun

Muhammad's research is on the impact of geopolitical risk on various firm-level behaviours, such as the use of informal financing and investment in eco-friendly R&D projects. Muhammad has presented his research at various conferences, including FIRN, AFAANZ, and the Inspires Research Network.

I was introduced to Muhammad online, and he was my first UOW-originating PhD student (unlike Suranga and Yun who I brought over from UNSW). He began his PhD informally before being enrolled while in Bangladesh which was quite impressive. Currently, all three empirical chapters are under review with one chapter in its 3rd stage of revision at the Australian Journal of Management, and another under R&R with the British Accounting Review journal.  

Dr Andy Umali
Australian National University 

Status: Completed (December 2024)

Supervision Team: Long Chu

Andy's research is on the use of mobile money in developing countries and their impact on household savings and consumption patterns. He employs DiD and triple DiD models to tease out causal relationships. Andy's PhD was funded by the Australia Awards scheme and was one out of two successful applicants that year from the Philippines. I am currently working with Andy on getting his 3 empirical chapters ready for publication.

I met Andy in 2016 while doing some consulting work in Manila. He was an exceptionally hard working and bright individual, and I am glad that I was able to help him apply for the Australia Award scholarship as he needed an Australian academic to assist.  

Ali Omar
University of Wollongong

Status: In-progress

Supervision Team: Tillmann Boehme, Makrita Solitel

Ali's research is on the barriers and enablers of migrant entrepreneurs in Australia. This will primarily be a qualitative thesis consisting of a systematic literature review (with citation clustering analysis) and long-form interviews with local entrepreneurs. Ali is currently in the data collection phase.

I first met Ali during my teaching of the MBA 906 class at UOW, and he expressed a keen interest in further study/research. He is now an adjunct lecturer at various universities (UOW, Macquarie University, USYD) and I have oftentimes present short guest lectures on data analytics in his classes.  

Dr Agnes Tang
University of New South Wales

Status: Completed (December 2021)

Supervision Team: Richard Wu

Agnes' PhD was on developing a data-driven fuel-uplift algorithm for Qantas Airways. The idea was to use bootstrapping of fuel burn data (from QAR data) to create a distribution of fuel burn for an aircraft before take-off based on weather forecasts, seasons, planned route, etc. Given the conditional distribution of fuel burn, airlines will be better able to reduce the risk of fuel exhaustion while avoiding excessive fuel carriage. This reduces fuel burn (cost of fuel carriage) and reduces GHG emissions. 

I was asked by Richard to join the supervision team during Agnes' first year of her PhD as the methodology supervisor. Agnes now works in Qantas as a technical analyst.

Outputs:  
Tang, N. Y. A., Wu, C.-L., & Tan, D. (2020). Evaluating the implementation of performance-based fuel uplift regulation for airline operation. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 133, 47–61. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2019.12.028

Tang, A., C.L. Wu, & D.T. Tan, 2018, “Quantification of WAFS Weather Forecast Uncertainties and Its Effect on Fuel Burn Using Historical Flight Data”, International Conference for Research in Air Transportation.