Dr. Sandeep Keshava Rao

Dr Sandeep Rao is the Head of the Financial & Operational Performance Academic Group and an Associate Professor of Finance at the DCU Business School. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Sustainable Finance and Investments and has served as the AE of Review of Accounting and Finance and Journal of Risk Finance. Earlier, he also served as the Programme Chair of the MSc in Finance and MSc in International Treasury and Banking at the DCU Business School. Dr Rao is also a member of the American Finance Association (AFA), Financial Management Association (FMA), Irish Academy of Finance (IAF) and The Indian Econometric Society (TIES).

Dr Rao’s research focuses on Corporate Finance and Sustainable Finance, with a special emphasis on Climate Change. He has contributed to top ABS-ranked journals such as the Journal of Corporate Finance, The British Journal of Management, Annals of Operations Research, Economics Letters, Energy Economics, and Research in International Business and Finance. His expertise extends to teaching Corporate Finance and Sustainable Finance at DCU Business School, and he has delivered lectures at various international B-Schools, including DHBW (Germany), KEDGE (France), University of Birmingham (UK-Singapore), among others.

He is the founding Member of the International Finance Research Collaborative (iFRC), a dynamic group of finance academic networks dedicated to advancing knowledge and driving impactful research in finance. He is also an active member of international research centres such as the DCU Institute for Research in Business & Society, the DCU Institute for Climate and Society, the FinLab, Sustainable Financial Innovation Centre (SFiC, UK), the National Centre for Family Business (NCFB), and the Ireland India Institute at DCU.

Earlier, Dr Rao was the founder and CEO of two technology companies in India. Under his leadership, the companies provided several IT solutions, including PLM, ERP, fuel management systems and RFID technology integration into social media branding. He was also an award-winning market analyst at Thomson Reuters in the mergers and acquisitions department and a sub-broker of the stock broking firm Motilal Oswal Securities Ltd in India. He holds a PhD in Accounting and Finance from the triple-accredited University of Strathclyde and is a UK Commonwealth Alumni. Additionally, he has an MSc in International Securities and Investment Banking from the ICMA Centre, Henley Business School, UK, and an MBA from Visveswaraiah Technological University, India.

Research Interests

Corporate Finance, Sustainable Finance, Climate Change, Higher Education

Teaching Interests

Corporate Finance, Valuation & Sustainable Finance.

Funding Highlights

· 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026 - Erasmus+ Mobility programmes Key Action One (KA1) Learning Mobility of Individuals. Small ticket grants ranging between EUR 400 to EUR 2,000, during these years to undertake teaching exchange activities in Sustainable Finance with Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart, Germany.

· 2025/26 – (Principal Investigator) Research grant €20,000 from AIB for the project “Sustainable Finance Models for Irish SMEs”; part of the €400,000 in funding to fund 4-5 micro-projects awarded to DCU Business School. (with Dr Pawan Kumar)

· 2025 – (Secondment) Research grant €2,100 under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme RISE under grant agreement no. 823759 (REMESH) at Mahidol University, Thailand.

· 2024 (capacity of a co-author) - National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.71991473 and No.71671076 – Output – Journal paper: Do Titans Deliver the ESG Promise? Societal Recognition and Responsible Corporate Decision (with Luo, D., Koirala, S., & Farag, H).

· 2022 – (Principal Investigator) Research grant worth €4,980 under the Research Initiatives Fund of Dublin City University Funding

· 2022 (capacity of a co-author) - Project number 7934 funding grant by Deputyship for Research & Innovation, Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia – Output – Journal paper: Fintech Proliferation and Risk-taking Consequence of Islamic Banks (with Aldwayan, S., and Koirala, S) – Revise and resubmit

· 2022 (capacity of a co-author) - European Union’s Horizon 2020 grant, ISIGrowth GA no. 649186; and the Slovenian Research Agency (research core funding No. P5-0117 and P5-0177) – Output – Journal paper: Does acquisition lead to the growth of high-tech scale-ups? Evidence from Europe (with Burger, A., Hogan, T., Kotnik, P., & Sakinc, M.E).

· 2021 (Principal Investigator) - Research grant worth €4,000 under the DCU Business School Research Seed Funding – Output – Journal paper: Mandatory CSR expenditure and stock market liquidity (with Roy, PP., & Zhu, M.)

CV

External Positions

Visiting/Adjunct Professor, • University of Birmingham, UK & Singapore
2022 – Ongoing
Academic Tutor (Finance), , The University of Strathclyde
2017 – 2020
Assistant Professor of Finance, PES University, Bengaluru
2015

Academic Qualifications

Higher Diploma, University of Strathclyde
2019
Project: P.G. Diploma in Research Methodology in Business & Management
PhD, University of Strathclyde
2017 – 2020
Project: Corporate Borrowing and Investment decisions under Regulatory and Climate risk
Certificate, ICMA, U.K
2009
Project: Certificate in International Fixed Income and Derivatives