With corporate-fraud scandals on the rise, SMU Associate Professor of Accounting (Education) Gary Pan explained why the big question is not how to prevent and respond to fraud, but how to detect when the next Enron scandal or Ponzi scheme happens. Recent high-profile fraud cases in Singapore further fuelled his interest in this research area. “I wondered why on earth such scandals still happen when previous scandals received such wide publicity,” he said. Professor Pan’s research focuses on the intersection between two key areas, that of corporate governance and the role information technology (IT) in this particular space. Professor Pan’s current research interests have moved beyond fraud prevention and response, to fraud detection. Together with two colleagues from the SMU School of Accountancy, Associate Professor Seow Poh Sun and Associate Professor Themin Suwardy, he is using digital analysis techniques to analyse accounting transactions with the aim of detecting irregular patterns.