As one of SFU's most outstanding graduate students from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Dr. Marieh Azizirad is recognized with the Dean of Graduate Studies Convocation Medal. On behalf of SFU, we congratulate Dr. Azizirad on her outstanding achievements.

Dr. Marieh Azizirad’s thesis,Three Essays on the Importance of the Liquidity Premium in Monetary Economics, focuses on the impacts of government and central bank policies on the economy. Her research combines insights from theory, experimental methods, and applied macroeconomics. In addition to testing a contested proposition, the Neo-Fisherian Hypothesis (whether higher interest rates cause higher inflation), Azizirad argued that a measure of the liquidity premium has previously been omitted in studies countering the Neo-Fisherian Hypothesis, but its inclusion helps to improve the fit of the model for the other variables used when testing, and, is also an important macroeconomic variable in its own right. These findings will be used to discipline future monetary theory as well as motivate entirely new questions to ask in future research and in identifying assumptions within current theories and models.

In addition to her research and thesis, Azizirad also received the Richard G. Lipsey Award for the PhD student with the best firs-year qualifying exam results, the Lang Wong Memorial Scholarship for Academic Excellence, the James Dean Award for Best Paper, the Peter Kennedy Memorial Fellowship, and the SFU President’s PhD Scholarship. She’s presented her work at the Canadian Economic Association, the “Summer Workshop on Money, Banking, Payments and Finance”, the Vienna Macroeconomics Workshop, and the Western Economic Association International Conference.

Azizirad’s Supervisor, Dr. Lucas Herrenbrueck, is looking forward to continuing to work with her in the future. Says Herrenbrueck, “Beyond her strong scholarly qualifications, Marieh is one of the nicest people I know in academia. She is kind, thoughtful, patient, and always ready to help her students and her colleagues. In my opinion, the International Monetary Fund has gained a cherished colleague and an excellent researcher who will be publishing papers in good journals for many years to come (in fact, I hope that some of these papers will be joint with me).”

Azizirad feels truly blessed for having experienced an exceptional PhD journey, one she couldn't have envisioned any better. She attributes this to having had an outstanding supervisory team, whom she now considers lifelong colleagues and friends. Her academic and personal growth during this period has been profoundly shaped by their guidance, support, and camaraderie.

Azizirad's journey reached a pinnacle with the honor of receiving the Dean’s Convocation Medal from Simon Fraser University (SFU). This prestigious award, symbolizing her hard work, dedication, and excellence, fills her with immense pride. As she reflects on her accomplishments, she feels a deep sense of fulfillment and gratitude, knowing that her academic chapter at SFU concluded on such a high note.

Following her PhD at Simon Fraser University, she embarked on a postdoctoral journey at the University of Warwick before securing her dream role as an Economist at the International Monetary Fund.