Sean Cao is an associate professor of AI, FinTech and sustainability (with tenure) in the Robert H Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. He is also an affiliated professor at Harvard Business School (D^3 Institute).

Cao's research has been featured in the Financial Times, CNBC, Bloomberg, The Guardian and Quartz. He has given more than 100 invited research talks at major research universities. Cao also serves as a guest associate editor at Management Science.

In 2020-22, Cao co-chaired conferences with the Review of Financial Studies (dual submission) on Fintech and Machine Learning. He has been honored with the award by the Deloitte Initiative for AI and Learning (DIAL), leading to develop AI solutions for social inclusion and climate change.

For teaching, Cao has been invited externally by major research universities to teach short-term doctoral seminars on AI and Fintech in finance and accounting. He also runs a tutorial blog site that aims to help scholars outside of computer science smoothly adapt machine learning to finance and accounting research.