On Thursday, March 24th, the Business School at WPI hosted a lab dedication in celebration of Huong Higgins, a faculty member who passed away in October 2020. Friends, family, and colleagues gathered to pay tribute to her achievements and successes.
Huong was born in Saigon, Vietnam on December 5th, 1963 to Kiet Tuan Ngo and Cut Vo. She graduated from the University of Saigon with degrees in English and French in 1990. Huong and her family came over to the US in 1991. She met Read while attending Georgia State University, and they were married in February of 1995.
In 1998, after receiving her PhD in Accounting, they moved to Worcester, MA where Huong began her 22-year career as a professor at WPI. Huong conducted research on global accounting practices, investigating how institutions in different countries shape the behavior of market participants. She was a co-principal investigator on a $515,000 National Science Foundation award received in 2014 for research aimed at developing visual analytics tools for detecting financial risk and fraud within real-time streaming data. A Certified Public Accountant in the Commonwealth of MA, she also served as a consultant to a number of organizations. She published extensively in leading accounting journals, including Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Financial Analysts Journal, and Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, and was a member of the editorial board of the Journal of the International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation. With associate professor Fabienne Miller, she received the 2016 Bea Sanders/American Institute of Certified Public Accountants Innovation in Teaching Award for a project titled “UBuild: A Simulation Bridging Financial and Managerial Accounting. “She was a strong proponent of financial education and believed that every student would benefit from financial competencies,” Miller said.
Huong's family was the highlight of her life. She was an amazing mother who took great care to prepare her children for life's challenges.
She was also an avid gardener. She enjoyed singing and traveling with her family. She also found time to teach herself how to juggle and loved to dance. Huong was a practicing Buddhist and took great comfort in meditating and going to temple.
While Huong is missed by all, the Huong Higgins Lab will be a permanent memorial to her legacy and impact at WPI.
Below are photos from the dedication and remembrance.
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