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Featured Research Faculty

You may want to visit our more general Lynn Pippenger School for Accountancy page for an overview of the school and our entire faculty, which includes additional scholars of interest. Many of our faculty conduct research, though the most research-active among them are on the tenure track (Assistant Professors, Associate Professors, and Professors). We also benefit greatly from numerous non-tenure track faculty, some of whom conduct research and all of whom are industry experts, such that everyone contributes to our research mission through their scholarship and/or business expertise.

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Featured Senior Professors

Mark H. Taylor - Professor and Director, Lynn Pippenger School of Accountancy

Mark Taylor is the director of the Lynn Pippenger School of Accountancy. He began his duties over the summer of 2019, coming from the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. There, Taylor was the department chair and accounting professor.

He had been with Case Western Reserve University since 2009 and was the Andrew D. Braden Professor of Accounting and Auditing, teaching courses in corporate governance and auditing assurance areas. He is the past president of the Auditing Section of the American Accounting Association and he also has served on the Auditing Section Executive Committee.

For three years, he was on the Senior Technical Committee of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants Auditing Standards Board. He also is the audit committee chair and independent trustee on three investment company trusts and has had research sponsored by the Center for Audit Quality twice in the past three years.

Taylor earned a doctorate from the Eller School of Business at the University of Arizona and a master’s degree in accounting from Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Management.

Maria Caban-Garcia - Associate Professor (St. Petersburg)

Maria T. Caban-Garcia is an associate professor at the Lynn Pippenger School of Accountancy in St. Petersburg. She began at ¹ú²ú¶ÌÊÓƵin 2004 and primarily teaches financial accounting at the upper undergraduate level and has taught financial statement analysis at the graduate level. She also has experience teaching courses in fully online delivery formats.

Caban-Garcia was the Skoda Minotti Faculty Scholar of Accounting from August 2018 to June 2020 and served as the interim chair of the program of accountancy at USF in St. Petersburg from January 2019 to June 2020.

Her research interests are in the areas of financial accounting and auditing with an emphasis in international topics. She has published articles in several academic and practitioner’s journals, including the British Accounting Review, the Journal of International Accounting Research, Strategic Finance, and Internal Auditing. She was the recipient of the "Best International Business Paper Award," from the Center of Excellence in International Business at Youngstown State University and received a Certificate of Merit from the Institute of Management Accountants' Lybrand Awards Manuscript Competition.

Caban-Garcia earned a PhD in accountancy from the University of Missouri-Columbia, a master's degree in accounting from State University of New York-Albany and bachelors’ degrees in economics and accounting from the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez. She is a CPA licensed to practice in both Puerto Rico and Florida.

Madeline Domino - Associate Professor (Sarasota-Manatee)

Madeline A. Domino is an associate professor of accounting in the Lynn Pippenger School of Accountancy in Sarasota-Manatee. She is a Certified Public Accountant and holds a designation as a Master Analyst in Financial Forensics. Prior to joining USF, she worked as an audit manager for PricewaterhouseCoopers, an international controller for Gould International’s European Division and as CFO and audit committee member for a major affiliate of Bank of America.

Her teaching and research interests include accounting ethics, accounting information systems, auditing and forensic accounting and she has taught at University of Central Florida, Georgia State University, Mercer University and Saint Leo Center for Online Learning. She has received a number of teaching and research awards and developed a course in forensic accounting for the Masters in Professional Accountancy program for Georgia State University. Her work has been published in the Journal of Business Ethics, Strategic Organization, the Accounting Research Journal, Information Technology & Management and the Journal of Investigative and Forensic Accounting.  She is active in the American Accounting Association, serves as a member of the Florida Continuing Education Ethics Subcommittee, AIS Educators and is a reviewer for a number of academic publications.

Domino earned a PhD with a concentration in management Information systems from USF and a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Florida State University.

Lisa Gaynor - Professor and James E. and Ellis Rooks Distinguished Professor (Tampa)

Lisa Gaynor is an professor in the Lynn Pippenger School of Accountancy, whose primary teaching responsibilities are in the areas of auditing and financial accounting. She currently teaches intermediate financial accounting at the undergraduate level and the integrative (capstone) seminar in the master's program.

Her general research interests lie in auditing and financial reporting topics with a behavioral and decision making focus. More specifically, her research examines how individuals' (e.g., investors, auditors or audit committee members) judgments and behavior may be affected by rules and regulations related to independence, fraud, fair values and disclosures. She has been published in academic journals such as The Accounting Review, Accounting Organizations & Society, Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory, Accounting Horizons and Issues in Accounting Education. In addition, she was chosen as one of the editors in Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory as well as the academic co-editor of Current Issues in Auditing. In 2017, Gaynor was selected to serve on the editorial board of Contemporary Accounting Research, a premier accounting journal.

Gaynor earned a PhD from the University of Texas, Austin; an MBA from the University of Miami and a bachelor's degree from the University of Florida. A licensed CPA, Gaynor taught at Georgetown University and Florida State University prior to joining USF in 2006. Before entering academia, she served in roles such as controller, director of finance, auditor and tax accountant for both public and private industries.

Carlos Jiménez-Angueira - Associate Professor (Sarasota-Manatee)

Carlos E. Jiménez-Angueira is an associate professor of accounting in the Lynn Pippenger School of Accountancy in Sarasota-Manatee. He was an assistant professor at The University of Texas in San Antonio before joining the ¹ú²ú¶ÌÊÓƵ. Prior to starting his career as an accounting scholar, he worked in the pharmaceutical industry as a cost analyst and as a cost accounting section manager.

Jiménez holds memberships in the Puerto Rico Society of Certified Public Accountants, the American Accounting Association and the Institute of Management Accountants. His research interests encompass corporate tax, financial reporting, executive compensation and corporate governance. His work has been published in the Advances in Accounting, Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Asian Review of Accounting, the Journal of Theoretical Accounting Research, Cost Management and the CPA Journal. Over the last few years, he has taught courses on advanced accounting, cost accounting, entities taxation, corporate tax, and individual taxation. Jiménez was the recipient of the Advisory Council Outstanding Teaching Award in Fall 2020.

Jiménez earned a PhD and a master's degree in accounting from the University of Florida and a bachelor's degree in business administration-accounting from the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez.

Wenshan "Jerry" Lin - Professor (St. Petersburg)

Wenshan Lin is an accounting professor in the Lynn Pippenger School of Accountancy in St. Petersburg. He came here in 2015 from Colorado State University-Pueblo and currently teaches courses related to advanced financial accounting, auditing, intermediate financial accounting and accounting research.

His research interests lie in audit quality, corporate governance and financial reporting quality; determinants and consequences of accounting disclosures and internal controls. He is a member of the American Accounting Associaton. His research has appeared in Benchmarking: An International Journal, Accounting Horizons, the Asia-Pacific Journal of Accounting and Economics, Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, among others.

Lin earned a PhD from the University of North Texas and an MBA from the University of Houston.

Fang-Chun Liu - Associate Professor (St. Petersburg)

Fang-Chun Liu is an associate professor at the Lynn Pippenger School of Accountancy in St. Petersburg. She has been at ¹ú²ú¶ÌÊÓƵsince 2018, coming from the Stevens Institute of Technology where she was an assistant professor. She currently teaches Accounting Information Systems and Principles of Managerial Accounting.

Her research interests include business value of technology, corporate governance, extensible business reporting language, strategic management and performance measurement. Her work has been published in Benchmarking: An International Journal, Decision Sciences, Information and Management, and International Journal of Operations and Production Management. She has presented her research at the American Accounting Association Annual Meeting and the International Conference on Information Systems, among others. She is a member of the American Accounting Association and the Association for Information Systems.

Liu received a PhD from Temple University, an MBA from the National Chung Cheng University in Taiwan, and a bachelor’s degree in accounting from National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan.

Uday Murthy - Professor and Eminent Scholar (Tampa)

Uday S. Murthy is the Quinn Eminent Scholar in the Lynn Pippenger School of Accountancy who had, for eight years until 2019, served as the school's director. He has received several research awards, including the Muma College of Business Outstanding Research Achievement Award in 2004 and 2010 and the Grant Thornton ¹ú²ú¶ÌÊÓƵFaculty Research Award for 2005 and 2006. Murthy teaches graduate courses in accounting information systems and PhD seminars in research methods and accounting information systems.

Murthy studies data modeling and design methodologies for accounting systems, auditing computer-based systems, expert systems and group support systems in accounting. His research has been published or accepted for publication in scholarly journals such as The Accounting Review, Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory, the Journal of Management Information Systems, the Journal of Information Systems, the International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, Decision Support Systems, Information & Management, and the International Journal of Auditing.

He earned a PhD from Indiana University and MBA from Drexel University. Qualified as a Chartered Accountant in India, he worked at Price Waterhouse in Mumbai, India. He has served as coeditor of the Journal of Information Systems, the leading academic journal for accounting information systems research.

Carl Pacini - Professor (St. Petersburg)

Carl Pacini is an accounting professor in the Lynn Pippenger School of Accountancy on the St. Petersburg campus. He takes a hands-on approach to accounting, giving students a better idea of the jobs that exist beyond the Big Four public accounting firms. He has brought in as guest speakers representatives from the FBI, IRS and the Florida Office of the Attorney General.

Pacini has taught at ¹ú²ú¶ÌÊÓƵsince 2012 and specializes in auditor liability, financial services regulation and forensic accounting. He is a Certified Public Accountant and well-published author who has written or co-authored more than 80 peer-reviewed publications. He also co-authored a textbook, "The Essentials of Forensic Accounting," and is a member of numerous professional organizations, including the American Accounting Association, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners and the Institute for Fraud Prevention.

He earned a PhD from Florida State University and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Notre Dame.

Jong Chool Park - Associate Professor and Muma Fellow (Tampa)

Jong Chool Park is an associate professor and Muma Fellow in the Lynn Pippenger School of Accountancy. His primary research interest lies at the intersection of auditing, financial accounting and management accounting. His work has been published in leading accounting journals, including the Journal of Accounting and Economics, The Accounting Review, Review of Accounting Studies, Contemporary Accounting Research, Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory, and the Journal of Management Accounting Research. He won an outstanding research paper award from American Accounting Association International Accounting Section Midyear Meeting in 2022.

His teaching focuses on financial accounting and financial statement analytics. He previously taught accounting at Carnegie Mellon University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Old Dominion University. He won the Advisory Council Outstanding Teaching Award in 2019 and 2023.  He is also a member of the American Accounting Association and a past president of the Korean American Accounting Professors Association.

He earned a PhD and a master's degree in accounting from Carnegie Mellon University, a master's degree in economics from the University of Buffalo in New York and a master's degree in statistics from the University of Chicago. He received a bachelor's degree from the Seoul National University in South Korea.

Jacqueline Reck - Professor and Robert Keith Endowed Professor (Tampa)

Jackie Reck is the James E. Rooks Distinguished Professor in the Lynn Pippenger School of Accountancy. She teaches graduate-level courses in government-nonprofit accounting.

Reck researches government accounting/auditing, accounting information systems and the reporting and use of non-financial information. The Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, the Journal of Information Systems, the Journal of Governmental & Nonprofit Accounting, Research in Governmental and Nonprofit Accounting, and the Journal of Business Ethics are some of the publications in which her research has appeared. She is also a frequent presenter at academic and practitioner conferences. A licensed CPA, Reck is a member of the American Accounting Association, the American Institute of CPAs, the Association of Government Accountants, the Government Finance Officers Association and Beta Gamma Sigma. In 2020 she received the American Accounting Association, Government Nonprofit Section’s Enduring Lifetime Contribution Award.

She earned a PhD in accountancy from the University of Missouri-Columbia and a master's degree in accounting and a bachelor's degree from USF. She also received a bachelor's degree in education and dietetics from North Dakota State University.

Dahlia Robinson - Professor and Advisory Council Endowed Professor (Tampa)

Dahlia Robinson is a professor and the KPMG Faculty Fellow in the Lynn Pippenger School of Accountancy. She teaches courses in financial accounting at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. She is the recipient of the Lynn Pippenger School of Accountancy 2017 Summer Research Grant, a 2016 Institute of Fraud Prevention Grant. In 2017, Robinson received the Beta Alpha Psi Teaching Award.

An avid researcher, Robinson's interests include the capital market use of financial disclosures (with particular focus on the use of accrual information), corporate governance and how governance potentially influences managerial actions and disclosures. Her research on financial accounting has been published in journals such as the Journal of Accounting and Economics, Review of Accounting Studies, the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory, and more recently in The Accounting Review. She previously worked as an auditor for Price Waterhouse, taught at the University of the West Indies and worked as a business consultant in Jamaica. Prior to joining the ¹ú²ú¶ÌÊÓƵfaculty, Robinson taught at Arizona State University for seven years.

She earned a PhD from the University of Georgia, a master's degree in accounting from the University of the West Indies (Jamaica) and a master's degree in finance from Pennsylvania State University. She received a bachelor's degree in natural sciences from the University of the West Indies.

Debra Sinclair - Associate Professor (St. Petersburg)

Debra Sinclair is the Gregory, Sharer and Stuart Term Professor of Accounting in the Lynn Pippenger School of Accountancy in St. Petersburg. She teaches students about business valuation and financial accounting as an associate professor of accounting.

Sinclair is a Certified Valuation Analyst (CVA) and a Certified Management Accountant (CMA). She was selected as the Gregory Sharer & Stuart Term Professor for both the 2018-19 and 2019-20 academic years. Her research interests include corporate governance, fraudulent financial reporting, materiality, compensation, small business valuation, valuation in financial reporting and white-collar crime. Her work has been published in the Journal of Forensic & Investigative Accounting, the Journal of Forensic Accounting Research and St. Mary’s Law Journal, among others. She is a member of the Women in Leadership and Philanthropy, the Institute of Business Appraisers and the National Association of Certified Valuation Analysts.

She earned a PhD from Temple University, an MBA from Drexel University and a bachelor's degree from USF.

Tom Smith - Associate Professor and Grant Thornton Endowed Professor (Tampa)

Tom Smith is the Grant Thornton Professor, teaching intermediate financial accounting and a PhD seminar in archival accounting. He was awarded the Lynn Pippenger School of Accountancy Advisory Council Outstanding Teaching Award in 2016 and in 2020, he was the recipient of the ¹ú²ú¶ÌÊÓƵOutstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award.

His research appears in Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory, International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, The Journal of the American Taxation Association, Journal of Accounting, Auditing, & Finance, Journal of Information Systems, Accounting Horizons, Journal of Financial Research, and Advances in Accounting. His research interests include banking, auditing, cybersecurity and executive compensation.

Smith earned a PhD, MBA and bachelor's degree from Florida State University and is a licensed CPA. He previously taught at Florida Atlantic University, receiving the Professor of the Year Award in 2011.

James Whitworth - Associate Professor (Tampa)

James Whitworth is an associate professor in the Lynn Pippenger School of Accountancy, teaching auditing and financial accounting.

His research on audit report timeliness has been published in Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory and the Journal of Information Systems. He received a "best paper award" from the 2012 Academy of Business Research Conference. His research interests include auditing, financial accounting, corporate governance, audit committees and earnings quality. He is a licensed CPA and previously was an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. He also spent four years as a corporate accountant and one year in public accounting.

Whitworth earned a PhD in accountancy from the University of Missouri, a master's degree in accounting from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a bachelor's degree from the University of Kansas.

Tenure-track Assistant Professors

Kristina Demek - Assistant Professor (Tampa)

Kristina Demek is an assistant professor in the Muma College of Business' Lynn Pippenger School of Accountancy, coming from the University of Central Florida where she had been an assistant professor since 2014.

Her research interests include the role of accounting information and control systems in the judgments and decisions of investors and managers. She has published in AUDITING: A Journal of Practice and Theory and the International Journal of Accounting Information Systems and  serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Forensic Accounting Research.

Demek received a PhD in accounting from the University of Washington and a bachelor's degree in operations research and industrial management from Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania.