| Speakers and Panelists |
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Martin J. Gruenberg 
Martin J. Gruenberg was sworn in as Chairman of the FDIC Board of Directors on January 5, 2023. He has been a member of the FDIC Board since August 2005 and previously served as Vice Chairman from August 2005 to July 2011 and as Chairman from November 2012 to mid-2018. Mr. Gruenberg has also served as Acting Chairman on a number of occasions. |
Ernesto Aldana 
Dr. Aldana is an Assistant Professor of Finance and Real Estate at Clemson University's Wilbur O. and Ann Powers College of Business. His research interests span real estate finance, banking, and financial intermediation. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.S. in Finance from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a Master's degree in Economics from El Colegio de Mexico, and an undergraduate degree in Economics from UNAM. Before his doctoral studies, he worked as a data scientist at Banorte in Mexico City. |
Natee Amornsiripanitch Natee Amornsiripanitch is a Senior Financial Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. His research interests include household finance, real estate, and entrepreneurial finance. His research work has been published in peer-reviewed journals and covered by major press outlets such as the New York Times, the Financial Times, NPR, and Bloomberg. He holds a Ph.D. in Financial Economics from Yale University. |
Mehdi Beyhaghi 
Mehdi Beyhaghi is a senior economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Hi s current work focuses on the economic impact assessment of pending bank capital and liquidity regulations, particularly the Basel III endgame. He has extensive experience in the supervision and regulation of large financial institutions, the Federal Reserve’s stress testing programs, and emergency lending initiatives. His research areas include financial intermediation, the information environment within it, the economics of bank regulation, and central banking. |
Elizabeth Bickmore 
Elizabeth Bickmore (Lizzy) is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in finance at Virginia Tech Pamplin College of Business. She completed a B.S. in finance and a B.A. in international business at Utah State University. Her research interests are in banking and empirical corporate finance. |
Anna Chernobai 
Anna Chernobai is a Professor of Finance at the M.J. Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University. The focus of her research is operational risk, default risk, stochastic processes, and applied statistics and probability. She has published in top finance and related journals such as the Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, MIS Quarterly, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Accounting Information Systems, and Real Estate Economics. She is also an author of the book “Operational Risk: A Guide to Basel II Capital Requirements, Models, and Analysis” published by Wiley Finance in 2007. Dr. Chernobai's teaching experience includes undergraduate and MBA courses, and PhD seminars in the areas of risk management, business statistics, and stochastic processes. |
Irem Erten 
Irem Erten is an Assistant Professor of Finance at Warwick Business School, Warwick University. She holds a PhD from London Business School, a MS degree in Financial Engineering from Bogazici University, and a BA degree in Economics from Middlebury College. She has also been a regular research visitor at the Bank of England since 2021. Her research focus is on financial intermediation. Her research agenda is to investigate the impact of agency problems and regulatory gaps on the behaviour of bank and non-bank intermediaries and the wider implications for the real economy. Her recent work is on the role of environmental and biodiversity risk in banking and the consequences of novel bank resolution designs. |
Luigi Falasconi 
Luigi Falasconi is a PhD Candidate in Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests lie in the areas of macro finance and international economics. In particular, his work studies the unintended consequences of setting higher bank capital requirements in the context of closed and open economies. |
Mark Flannery 
Mark J. Flannery has been the BankAmerica Eminent Scholar in Finance at the University of Florida from 1989 until his retirement in 2024. Professor Flannery worked as a part-time Senior Adviser to the Office of Financial Research from 2011-2014, and has been a long-term visitor to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Research Department. He served on the New York Fed’s Financial Advisory Roundtable (2006 -2014) and on the Federal ReserveSystem’s stress-test-related Model ValidationCouncil (May 2012 – 2014, chair 2013-2014). In 2003, he helped establish the FDIC’s Center for Financial Research and then served as co-director and senior adviser until 2007. He previously held faculty positions at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), and visiting positions at NYU, the London Business School, Cambridge, and the University of New South Wales. He has been recognized for excellence in both teaching and research: MBA teaching award (Best core course professor in 2006, 2009, and 2014) ; FMA Fellow; “Most Significant Paper” published in the Journal of Financial Intermediation during 2013; Jensen Prize for Corporate Finance and Organizations at the Journal of Financial Economics (second prize in 2012, first prize in 2013); “Best Paper in Financial Institutions,ʺ1995 Financial Management Association Meeting. Current research interests include the the behavior of share classes in U.S. mutual funds and the impact of deposit relationships on banks’ interest rate risk exposure. |
Janet Gao 
Janet Gao is the Lapeyre Family Associate Professor in Finance at McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University. Janet's research interests are in the areas of Financial Intermediation, Labor and Finance, and Sustainable Finance. Her work has been published in many top journals, including Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Accounting and Economics, The Accounting Review, Management Science, and Review of Finance. Janet Gao also serves as an Associate Editor for the Review of Financial Studies and Journal of Financial Intermediation. |
Jeff Gerlach 
Jeffrey R. Gerlach is Vice President in the Supervision, Regulation, and Credit (SRC) Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond and leads SRC’s Quantitative Supervision & Research (QSR) unit. Prior to joining the Richmond Fed as a Senior Financial Economist in 2011, Jeff was a professor at the SKK Graduate School of Business in Seoul, South Korea, the College of William & Mary, and an International Faculty Fellow at MIT. He worked as a Foreign Service Officer for the U.S. Department of State before earning a Ph.D. at Indiana University in 2001. |
Amanda Rae Heitz 
Amanda Rae Heitz is an Assistant Professor of Finance at Tulane University's A.B. Freeman School of Business. She is also an FDIC Visiting Scholar. Her research focuses on the intersection of banking and corporate finance, with a particular emphasis on two areas: 1) financial intermediation, especially tail events and stakeholder responses, and 2) Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) issues. By addressing emerging challenges, she has contributed valuable insights in areas that are increasingly relevant to policymakers and banking regulators. Her work on financial crises offers critical analysis and recommendations that shape effective strategies during turbulent times. Dr. Heitz earned her Ph.D. in Finance from the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, and an M.S. in Statistics, M.S. in Applied Mathematics, and B.S. in Finance, all from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. |
Jeffrey Jou 
Jeffrey Jou is a third-year Accounting PhD student at The Wharton School. His research examines disclosure decisions by financial institutions as well as the economic consequences of financial regulation. He holds a BA in Economics from Vanderbilt University. Prior to his PhD studies, Jou was a research assistant in the Stress Testing Research section at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. |
Dasol Kim 
Joined the OFR in 2016. His work centers on the banking sector, financial intermediation, and behavioral finance. He holds a doctorate in financial economics from the Yale School of Management, a master’s degree in statistics from Columbia University, and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and economics from the University of California, Los Angeles. Prior to earning his doctorate, he served as a research and teaching fellow at Stanford Law School. |
Hugh Kim 
Hugh Kim is an associate professor of finance at the Darla Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina. He received his Ph.D. from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Kim’s research interests include financial intermediation, investment, and investor behaviors. His research has been published in leading finance and economics journals such as the American Economic Review and the Journal of Financial Economics. |
Edward Kim 
Edward Kim is an assistant professor of finance at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. Kim's main research interests are in the areas of banking, fintech, and household finance. |
Anya Kleymenova 
Anya Kleymenova is a Principal Economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. She has expertise in the areas of information economics and financial and disclosure regulation. Her research focuses on financial institutions, liquidity, disclosure, real effects of regulatory changes, and access to credit. Anya received her Ph.D. from London Business School. She also has an undergraduate degree in finance from Georgetown University, McDonough School of Business, an MSc in economics from the London School of Economics, and an MSc in finance and MRes in accounting from London Business School. Anya was a Principal in the financial economics group of Charles River Associates in London, U.K. before her doctoral studies and a visiting researcher at the Bank of England during the last two years of her Ph.D. Prior to joining the Board, Anya was an assistant professor of accounting at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. |
Sotirios Kokas 
Sotirios Kokas is a Professor of Finance at the Essex Business School of the University of Essex. His research interests span the area of Financial Intermediation with a specific interest in empirical banking. |
Naz Koont 
Naz Koont is an Assistant Professor of Finance at Stanford GSB. Koont’s research, broadly defined, is in empirical financial intermediation. Specifically, she focuses on how technology and the emergence of non bank intermediaries are changing the banking landscape, and the implications for financial stability, competition, and consumer welfare. |
Eren Kurshan 
Dr. Eren Kurshan is an AI researcher and technology executive focused on building AI systems for large-scale industrial use cases. Kurshan received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Los Angeles, Master's in Computer Science and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering. Following her role as the Chief of Staff to IBM's Global Chief Innovation Officer, Kurshan has been serving as a technology executive at Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Investment Bank, Columbia University and Bank of America. She was a Visiting Fellow at Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy between 2015-2016 and served as an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University between 2014-2020. During her time at Bank of America, Kurshan led the development of the firm’s first in-house AI and machine learning based payment processing infrastructure including financial crime and fraud detection models for BofA’s real-time payment channels. She published over 90 peer reviewed technical publications and holds ~265 patents, 125 of which have been granted by the USPTO. Kurshan received the Best Paper Award from IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer Design in 2008, IEEE Micro Top Picks - Most Significant and Relevant Studies Recognition in 2009 and the Best Paper Award from IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Low Power Electronics in 2011. She received Top 3 inventor recognition from Bank of America and High-value patent licensing and NHN awards from IBM. She received the Outstanding Research Accomplishment Award from IBM for her work on system design and optimization and Outstanding Research Accomplishment Award for emerging technology development respectively. In 2024 she received the "Inventor of the Year Award" from New York Intellectual Property and Law Association for her contributions in financial crime detection through AI/ML-based computing systems. She serves as an Alumni Advisory Board Member for UCLA Computer Science Department and advisory committee member for Princeton Keller Center for Entrepreneurship eLab Program.
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Xu Lu 
Xu Lu is an assistant professor of finance at University of Washington. Her research focuses on financial intermediation, with recent work examining how depositor heterogeneity affects financial stability and monetary transmission. She earned her Ph.D. in finance from Stanford GSB in 2023. |
Sami Mahmood 
Sami Mahmood is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Finance at the National University of Singapore. He completed his Ph.D. in Finance at the University of Florida. Sami's research interests include Financial Intermediation, Banking, Investments, and Financial Economics, where he applies quantitative methods like Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing to financial data. He has presented his research at prestigious institutions, including the Federal Reserve, the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and Bank of Finland. Sami is dedicated to advance his research in the fields of Financial Intermediation, Financial History, Household Finance and Investments. |
Atanas Mihov 
Atanas Mihov teaches and conducts research at the University of Kansas (KU) School of Business. Before joining KU in 2020, he spent several years as a financial economist in the Quantitative Supervision & Research group at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. Mihov has expertise in risk quantification, measurement, and modeling. While at the Fed, he led a team of financial economists and quantitative analysts responsible for modeling operational risk at large financial institutions as part of the Federal Reserve's stress-testing program. His research, which has focused on banking and international finance among other topics, has been published in leading academic journals. Mihov holds a doctoral degree in Finance from the University of Florida's Warrington College of Business. |
Rajesh Narayanan Hermann Moyse/Louisiana Bankers Association Professor of Finance 
Dr. Narayanan’s academic research focuses broadly on issues related to banking and financial markets. His research has been published articles in leading academic journals including the Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies and Journal of Money Credit and Banking. He has delivered lectures to and conducted seminars on various topics for executives and technocrats in Brazil, China, the Czech Republic, India, Malaysia and South Africa. His interviews and commentary have been featured in national media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, CNN/Money, Bloomberg, Fortune as well as in regional and local media outlets such the Times Picayune, The Advocate, Baton Rouge Business report, WBRZ-TV, and WWL-Radio. |
Allison Nicoletti Allison Nicoletti joined the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania as an assistant professor of accounting in 2016. She holds a Ph.D. in accounting from The Ohio State University and a bachelor’s degree in accounting and economics from Illinois Wesleyan University. Prior to returning to academia, she was a senior audit associate in financial services at KPMG in Chicago, Ill., focusing on financial statement audits of bank and insurance companies and is a certified public accountant licensed in Illinois. Her research examines financial reporting and disclosure decisions made by financial institutions as well as the economic consequences of accounting standards and regulation. |
Yiming Qian 
Yiming Qian is Professor and the Toscano Family Chair in Finance at University of Connecticut. She earned her Ph.D. in Finance from the Stern School of Business at NYU. Before joining UConn, she taught at University of Iowa. She has also been a visiting scholar in Asia, Australia and Europe. Yiming’s research focuses on varying topics in corporate finance, including initial public offerings, private equity and venture capital, mergers and acquisitions, behavioral finance, and emerging markets. She is widely published in leading finance journals including the Journal of Financial Economics, the Review of Financial Studies, Management Science, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and Review of Finance, among others. Yiming has served as a board member of Midwest Finance Association. She is Associate Editor at the Journal of Empirical Finance and Quarterly Journal of Finance. She has also served on the program committees for many international finance conferences. |
Raluca A. Roman 
Raluca A. Roman is a Principal Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and joined the bank in July 2018. From 2015-2018, she was Research Economist at Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. She holds a Ph.D. in Finance from University of South Carolina. Raluca also holds an M.B.A. with concentration in Finance from University of Bridgeport, and a B.A. in Economics from Alexandru Ioan Cuza University (Romania). Raluca's research areas include a variety of topics related to banking and financial institutions, consumer finance (including retail credit, consumer behavior, and consumer market trends), corporate finance, and international finance. Raluca published a variety of research articles in academic journals including one in the Journal of Political Economy, three in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, one in the Management Science, three in the Journal of Financial Intermediation, two in the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, two in Financial Management, one in Journal of Corporate Finance, one in the Journal of International Money and Finance, one in the Journal of Financial Markets, Institutions, and Instruments, and three in the Journal of Banking and Finance. She also published one book chapter in the Handbook of Finance and Development, two book chapters in the Oxford Handbook of Banking, and one book chapter in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance, as well as several regulatory policy briefs. She also co-authored the books, The Economic and Financial Impacts of the COVID-19 Crisis Around the World: Expect the Unexpected (2023. Elsevier) and “TARP and other Bank Bailouts and Bail-Ins around the World: Connecting Wall Street, Main Street, and the Financial System” (2020, Elsevier). Raluca has presented her research and discussed the research of others at numerous finance and regulatory conferences. She also has 7+ years of professional experience in banking and corporate finance and worked for top international organizations like UBS Investment Bank and MasterCard International, where she won various awards. |
Asani Sarkar 
Asani Sarkar is a Financial Research Advisor in the Research and Statistics Group of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He is working on issues related to credit intermediation by banks and nonbank, and the stability of stablecoins. His paper “Stigma in Financial Markets: Evidence from Liquidity Auctions and Discount Window Borrowing During the Crisis” received the Western Finance Association Pearson Award for the best paper on Financial Institutions and Markets in 2011. Dr. Sarkar has also held positions at Columbia University, Princeton University, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.
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George Shoukry 
George Shoukry is a Senior Economist at the FDIC Center for Financial Research. He is interested in researching the design of banking laws and regulations, and how banks respond to regulatory shocks. In addition, he is interested in the use of machine learning methods in economics, and he has developed machine learning models to monitor and forecast banks' health. He joined the FDIC in June 2014 after receiving his PhD and MS in Economics from the University of Texas at Austin. He received a BS in Mechanical Engineering from West Virginia University and an MS in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology. |
Brian Silverstein 
Brian Silverstein is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Finance at the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina. Brian has worked extensively with derivatives and risk management techniques throughout his professional career, bringing a deep understanding of these areas to his academic role. He teaches his students about quantitative investment strategies and the practical applications of risk management within financial institutions, drawing on his 20+ years of experience working in the capital markets. His research interests lie at the intersection of finance and risk management. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and an Associate of the Society of Actuaries (ASA). He holds a PhD in Finance from Florida Atlantic University, an MS in Applied Mathematics from the University of Colorado, and a BS in Actuarial Science from the University of Illinois. |
Philip Strahan 
Philip E. Strahan holds the John L. Collins, S.J. Chair in Finance at the Carroll School of Management, Boston College. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of |
Anjan Thakor 
Anjan Thakor is interim dean of the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. He holds the John E. Simon Professorship of Finance, Director of the Olin Business School's PhD program, and is Director of the WFA Center for Finance and Accounting Research. Until July 2003, he was the Edward J. Frey Professorship of Banking and Finance and Chairman of the Finance Group at the University of Michigan Business School. Prior to joining Michigan, he served as the NBD Professor of Finance and Chairman of the Finance Department at the School of Business at Indiana University. Anjan has also served on the faculties of Northwestern University and UCLA He received his PhD in Finance from Northwestern University. He is a research associate of the European Corporate Governance Institute and a Fellow of The Financial Theory Group. He has served as managing editor of Journal of Financial Intermediation from 1996-2005 and currently serves as an associate editor. He is past-President and a founder of the Financial Intermediation Research Society. Anjan's research interests focus on banking, information economics, and corporate finance. His current research focuses on financial stability, bank capital, innovation, culture and the economics of higher purpose. He has published research articles in leading economics and Finance journals, like The American Economic Review, The Review of Economic Studies, The RAND Journal of Economics, The Economic Journal, International Economic Review, The Journal of Finance, The Journal of Economic Theory, The Journal of Financial Economics, The Journal of Financial Intermediation, and The Review of Financial Studies. In addition to his many published articles, monographs, and book chapters, Anjan has written numerous books, including: The Economics of Higher Purpose (Barrett-Koehler Publishers), The Purpose of Banking: Transforming Banking for Stability and Economic Growth (Oxford University Press; 2019), Contemporary Financial Intermediation (Elsevier, Fourth edition, 2019) Credit, Intermediation and the Macroeconomy: Models and Perspectives (Oxford University Press, 2004), Designing Financial Systems in Transition Economies (MIT Press, 2002), The Value Sphere: The Corporate Executive's Handbook For Creating and Retaining Shareholder Wealth (World Scientific Press, 2009 ), Competing Values Leadership ( Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006), and Handbook of Financial Intermediation and Banking (Elsevier, 2008). In an article published in 2008, he was identified as the fourth most prolific researcher in the world in Finance over the past 50 years based on publications in the top seven Finance journals over that time. In another paper published in 2017, he was listed as one of the five-most prolific Finance authors during 2005-15. In 2021, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from The Financial Intermediation Research Society for his contributions to financial intermediation research. Anjan has also been actively involved in advising PhD students who have gone on to enjoy distinguished academic careers. He has chaired PhD dissertation committees of over 30 students, and two of his former students from Indiana and Michigan are now his colleagues at Washington University in St. Louis. He has won numerous teaching awards in the MBA, Executive MBA, and PhD programs at Indiana University, University of Michigan and Washington University in St. Louis. |
Peter Tufano 
Peter Tufano is Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School and Senior Advisor to Harvard’s Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability. His current work focuses on climate finance, climate alliances, and the impact of extreme weather on household finances. With colleagues, he has launched the free global virtual doctoral reading group, The Financial Economics of Climate and Sustainability, which in 2024 reached doctoral students in over 130 schools. He is the co-editor of the new SSRN e-journal, Climate Finance, which will launch in September 2024. From 2011-2021, Tufano was Dean of the University of Oxford’s Said Business School, where he championed an approach that augmented traditional business education with considerations of systems leadership to address major global challenges. Prior to 2011, he was a professor at Harvard Business School for over two decades, where his work included financial innovation, financial engineering, and household finance. |
Farindokht Vaghef 
Farindokht Vaghefi is a Sr. Quantitative Analyst in the Supervision and Regulation at Federal Reserve Board. Her research focuses on financial economics, in particular banking and shadow banking. She earned her master’s degree from the SUNY at Buffalo and her doctoral degree in Finance from the City University of New York – Baruch College. |
Nancy Wallace 
Nancy Wallace is a Professor of Finance and Real Estate and holds the Lisle and Roslyn Payne Chair in Real Estate and Capital Markets at the Haas School of Business, the University of California, Berkeley. She is Chair of the Real Estate Group, Co-Chair of the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics, and directs the Real Estate and Financial Markets Laboratory. She teaches asset-backed securitization, real estate investment analysis, real estate strategy, and real estate finance at Haas. Her research focus includes residential house price dynamics, mortgage contract design and pricing, securitization and asset backed security pricing and hedging, lease contract design and pricing, methods to underwrite energy efficiency in commercial mortgages, and valuation models for executive stock options. She has served as a visiting scholar at the New York Federal Reserve Bank, the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, the Université de Cergy Pointoise, Centre de Recherche THEMA (Théorie Economique, Modélisation, et Applications), and the Stockholm School of Economics. Professor Wallace is a past President of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association and a past member of the AREUEA Board of Directors. Professor Wallace served on the Financial Research Advisory Committee, Office of Financial Research, U.S. Treasury Department (2013-2016), the Model Validation Council (MVC) of the Federal Reserve System (2013-2016), and served as chair of the MVC 2015-2016. |
| Lawrence Zhao |