Student Slain At Start Of Shooting Spree Awarded Posthumous Ph.D

CHICAGO — At a convocation ceremony Friday afternoon at Soldier Field, the University of Chicago is due to award a posthumous doctoral degree to a student killed in a shooting spree earlier this year.

Yiran Fan, 30, was in the fourth year of his Ph.D program when he was fatally shot in his car in a Hyde Park parking lot on Jan. 9. A native of China, he had previously earned a master's degree in financial economics from the university in 2015.

Fan was the first person shot that day by a 32-year-old gunman who shot five more people at three locations on Chicago's South Side before driving a stolen car to Evanston, where he killed a customer at an restaurant before police shot and killed him as he ran toward the entrance of a dollar store nearly four hours later.

Following his death, two of Fan's former professors reviewed his work and presented it remotely in March to more than 100 people, according to the Booth School of Business.

Fan's posthumous dissertation committee was co-chaired by Fan's former business school professors Lars Peter Hansen and Zhiguo He. Doron Ravid, from the economics department, and Veronica Guerrieri, from the business school, joined them on the committee.

While Fan had yet to propose a topic for his dissertation, he left behind research in online folders. His work focused on ways that rational behavior by banks and other institutions can lead to lead to risky lending decisions, according to the school.

“I see many students who get straight As but can’t do the critical thinking or challenge existing theory like Yiran could," said He, one of his former professors, according to school. "He had the right mind to do this type of work."

Fan's dissertation consisted of two essays, "Screening Competition under Flexible Information Acquisition" and, "The Interaction of Bankers' Asset and Liability Management with Liquidity Concerns."

For Fan's other former professor, Hansen, co-chairing the dissertation proposal and defense was a reminder of the loss of someone he knew personally and of a gifted and remarkable young scholar, he said in a statement to Inside Higher Ed.

“He won the Lee Prize from the economics department for being a top performing student in the macroeconomics core curriculum,” Hansen said. “My colleagues and I have been pleased to have him as a teaching assistant. Indeed, he always showed a deep commitment to help his fellow graduate students learn. He has been an invaluable intellectual resource to our economics and finance community. I have had many superb Ph.D. students over the years, but Yiran will stand out as someone truly special.”

University officials plan to present Fan's degree to his parents at the UChicago Center in Beijing in the fall, according to the Booth school.

In part with contributions from Fan's parents, the university has also established an annual fellowship in his name for students in the Joint Program in Financial Economics.