As an undergraduate, Ruiqing Miao was a double-major in Business Management and Computer Sciences and Applications. “I learned economics in the first two years of my college and realized that understanding the whole economy or a sector is much more interesting than managing a single company or developing smarter computers, so I selected economics for my graduate study,” he said. Miao was directed to the graduate program at Iowa State University by Dr. Cheng Wang, a former professor in the Department of Economics. “He visited Fudan University and taught Contract Theory there in 2005. I was his TA at that time. In the summer of 2008, I worked with Dr. Bruce Babcock on a project about biofuels, which brought me to CARD,” he said.

Miao spend about four-and-a-half years at CARD, mostly as a graduate student, then as a post-doc. “I still clearly remembered the many evenings working in my fifth floor office revising papers again and again,” he said. “Working at CARD with David Hennessy and Hongli Feng greatly prepared me for my career. The experience was enjoyable and rewarding, not only professionally but personally. It opened the door for me to the profession.”

Currently, Miao lives in Auburn, Alabama and works as an assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology at Auburn University. Miao is married with two children. In his free time he enjoys swimming and reading books to his children.