Dr. Sidika Gulfem Bayram teaches finance the way she believes it is best learned: by having students practice it with the tools professionals actually use. The Cullen Foundation Endowed Chair of Finance and a tenured Associate Professor at the University of St. Thomas, she designs course projects around industry-standard platforms such as the Bloomberg Terminal, so students graduate fluent in the systems that financial professionals use. She also directs independent studies that have produced student coauthored papers presented at national conferences, supervises internships, and advises the UST Investment Club. In 2025, she received the UST Saint Thomas Aquinas Excellence in Teaching Award and the Cameron School of Business Outstanding Teaching Award. Her attention has lately turned to the changes AI brings for students entering finance. After completing the Teaching with AI seminar at Harvard Business School, she brought large language models into her classroom and presented a case study on using them to teach financial ratio analysis in the Southwestern Business Administration Teaching Conference. She writes for wider audiences on the Cameron School of Business blog about the potential downsides of AI in the finance industry, blockchain and the future of finance, and investor sentiment and global exchange-traded funds. Dr. Bayram’s research examines how investor sentiment shapes asset prices in emerging markets, exchange-traded funds, and cryptocurrencies, as well as the effects of country governance, inflation, and monetary policy on returns. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Emerging Market Finance, the International Journal of Managerial Finance, Banks and Bank Systems, the Journal of Applied Business and Economics, Empirical Economics Letters, and the Journal of Business and Behavioral Sciences, and she has presented at international/national conferences across the United States and the World. She reviews for Applied Economics and the International Journal of Managerial Finance, both of which are ranked “”A”” on the ABDC Journal Quality List. Before entering academia full-time, she worked in various industries, including financial consulting and analysis. She holds a PhD in Finance and an MBA degree from the University of Texas-RGV