Profile
Lily Shen is an Associate Professor of Real Estate Finance at Clemson University and a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. After witnessing the 2008 financial crisis, she dedicated her career to advancing real estate research aimed at fostering more resilient financial systems.
Leveraging her experience in Silicon Valley, she has been at the forefront of integrating AI into real estate teaching and research, and she started Clemson's first hands-on AI courses in finance in 2018. Her work has been featured in The Economist and The Washington Post and published in leading academic journals, including Management Science, the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and the Journal of Urban Economics. She coauthors two standard textbooks in the field: Commercial Real Estate Analysis for Investment, Finance and Development, 4th edition (Routledge, 2026) and Real Estate Finance and Investments (McGraw Hill, 2027), for which she wrote the new chapter on artificial intelligence in real estate finance and investment.
Recent news: American Real Estate Society Kinnard Young Scholar Award (2026); Clemson College of Business Senior Scholar Research Excellence Award (2025-26); ARES Best Article Award, Journal of Real Estate Research (2025); Homer Hoyt Institute Weimer School Post-Doctoral Honoree (2025); Board Director, International Real Estate Society; editorial boards of the Journal of Housing Research and the Journal of Real Estate Literature. Presented at the Cambridge | HKU Real Estate Finance and Investment Symposium (September 2026); presenting at the ODU Real Estate Research Symposium (October 2026) and the AREUEA/ASSA annual meeting (January 2027).
Full profile, papers, and weekly notes on AI in finance and real estate: https://lilyshenai.github.io
