The new summer semester is about to start and new #financemaster students will embark their GBS journey very soon. However, the incoming students will not be the only newcomers joining our GBS Community...We are delighted to welcome new faculty members for this year's Master in Finance program: Dr. Christoph Hambel, Prof. Dr. Alexander Hillert and Dr. Kevin Bauer!

In addition to his position as Professor for Finance & Data Science, Alexander is also the program director of the SAFE Research Data Center. After his undergraduate studies at the University of Mannheim and HEC Paris, Alexander completed his Ph.D. in finance at the University of Mannheim. His research interests include empirical asset pricing, empirical corporate finance, and behavioral finance. In his research, he often uses methods from computer sciences to analyze unstructured information and to learn, for example, more on how investors collect, process, and interpret (text) information. His research has been published in leading finance journals including the Review of Financial Studies and the Journal of Financial Economics. Alexander has been involved in the training of young academics for many years. He regularly teaches, for example, in the doctoral programs of the VHB, Goethe University, the University of Mannheim, and WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management.

Alexander will be teaching the foundation course "Corporate Finance" for the Master in Finance program, where students will discuss fundamental questions such as how to value projects and how to solve capital budgeting and financing problems of corporations.

Not quite the Oscars, but with almost the same value: We have announced the Best Teaching Awards of the winter semester 2021/2022! In our last newsletter we had already introduced and congratulated Prof. Dr. Anna Rohlfing-Bastian for best teaching in "Managerial Accounting". Kindly join us now in also congratulating the awards recipients for the Pharma MBA elective "Research, Development & Medical Affairs": Dr. Aimo Kannt & Dr. Matthias Meergans! Both faculty members have excelled the challenges of teaching a specialization course divided into two parts by keeping the students fascinated with Pharma research and development as well as medical affairs.

We are delighted to announce that we have expanded our Open Programs portfolio! External course participants* have the chance to deepen their knowledge in the fields of finance and digital transformation and to network with GBS students this summer! *_{Course participants are visitors who are not responsible for assignments and do not take an exam or earn academic credits. As the number of seats in the course is limited, we recommend to register online early.}