Assistant professor leaves SMU after allegations of faked claims surface 

AN ASSISTANT professor of finance at the Singapore Management University (SMU), who allegedly inflated her resume with faked claims, has left the university after an investigation into the academic claims.

Margaret Zhu’s employment with SMU ceased with effect from May 1, the university’s spokesperson said on Friday (May 6).

“The University had sought to validate some concerns we had in this particular case and we concluded that some of the individual’s academic claims were not accurate,” the spokesperson said.

Zhu, who joined the university in July 2021, had listed 2 conditional acceptances to the Journal of Finance and Review of Financial Studies in her resume - meaning she had submitted 2 papers for publication in the journals and they had been accepted. But neither acceptance exists, according to a blog post by Christopher Brunet.

Brunet, who had been tipped off by a thread on the Economics Job Market Rumours forum, said he had emailed both journals to inquire about the status of the papers.

Both journals replied to say they have never accepted the specified papers from Zhu, in emails seen by The Business Times (BT).

Checks by BT also found that SMU had recently deleted Zhu’s assistant professor profile on its website, and emails to her address failed to deliver.

According to her LinkedIn profile, Zhu has worked in academia for the past 10 years, starting at the City University of Hong Kong in 2011 until 2019, then taking up a position at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) from 2019 to 2021, before moving to SMU in July 2021.

Brunet added that both conditional acceptances had been recently scrubbed from a list of publications at CUHK, where she was an assistant professor of finance.

SMU’s spokesperson said the university “adheres to strict standards in its faculty hiring processes as the quality of faculty at SMU is paramount to the University’s efforts in delivering a high quality SMU education and conducting leading-edge research. We expect faculty to demonstrate integrity in their conduct.”

The spokesperson added that the university will review its vetting procedures on academic writing and address any gaps to prevent such incidents from recurring.