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Robert Almgren Co-founder Quantitative Brokers and Fellow in the Mathematics in Finance Program at New York University. Until 2008, Dr Almgren was a Managing Director and Head of Quantitative Strategies in the Electronic Trading Services group of Banc of America Securities. From 2000-2005, he was a tenured Associate Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Toronto, and Director of its Master of Mathematical Finance program. Before that, he was an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of Chicago and Associate Director of the Program on Financial Mathematics. Dr. Almgren holds a B.S. in Physics and Mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an M.S. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in Applied and Computational Mathematics from Princeton University. He has an extensive research record in applied mathematics, including several papers on optimal securities trading, transaction cost measurement, and portfolio formation. Brad Banks Brad co-founded Athena Capital Research in June 2003. He is responsible for overall management and growth of the company, in addition to oversee- ing research,development, and risk management of investment strategies. Brad previously was a Managing Director at Tower Research Capital, a highly successful early pioneer in automated electronic trading. He has 10 years of industry experience covering operations, personnel, and portfolio management, as well as development of quantitative trading strategies. Prior to Tower, Brad attended the Massachusetts In- stitute of Technology (MIT), where he attained S.B. and M.Eng. degrees in Computer Science (1999). His graduate thesis research focused on the extraction of patterns from large data sets through statistical and machine learning techniques. Ian Domowitz Managing Director, Investment Technology Group, Inc. Ian Domowitz is a Managing Director at Investment Technology Group, Inc., responsible for analytical and network products, and a member of the company’s Management and Executive Committees. Prior to joining the company in 2001, he served as the Mary Jean and Frank P. Smeal Professor of Finance at Pennsylvania State University and previously was the Household International Research Professor of Economics at Northwestern University.  A former member of the NASD’s Bond Market Transparency Committee, he also served as chair of the Economic Advisory Board of the NASD. Mr. Domowitz has held positions with Northwestern’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Columbia University, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.  He is currently a Fellow of the Program in the Law and Economics of Capital Markets at Columbia University. Jim Gatheral Managing Director at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and also an adjunct professor at the Courant Institute of the Mathematical Sciences, New York, where for many years he has co-taught popular classes in the Masters Program of Mathematics in Finance. Prior to 2005 he headed the Equity Quantitative Analytics groups at Merrill Lynch. Over his long career in the financial markets, he has has been involved in all of the major derivative product areas as bookrunner, risk manager and quantitative analyst.  He has a BSc in mathematics and natural philosophy from Glasgow University and a PhD in theoretical physics from Cambridge University.  His current research focus is on volatility modeling and modeling equity market microstructure for algorithmic trading.  He has published papers in leading academic journals and is a regular speaker at international conferences.  His best-selling book, The Volatility Surface: A Practitioner's Guide (Wiley 2006), is now one of the standard references on the subject of volatility modeling. Joel Hasbrouck Kenneth G. Langone Professor of Business Administration and Professor of Finance, Stern School of Business, New York University Joel Hasbrouck is the Kenneth G. Langone Professor of Business Administration and Professor of Finance at the Stern School of Business, New York University. He studies the structure, design and regulation of the trading mechanisms used for securities (market microstructure). He has taught finance classes at hedge funds, and served as a consultant to stock exchanges and regulators. He is an Advisory Editor of the Journal of Financial Markets, an Associate Editor of the Journal of Financial Econometrics, the Journal of Financial Intermediation, and Finance Research Letters, and a past editor of the Review of Financial Studies. He has authored numerous academic articles and a book, Empirical Market Microstructure (Oxford University Press). He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.S. in Chemistry from Haverford College. Frank Hatheway Frank M. Hatheway is Chief Economist of the NASDAQ OMX Group Inc., and is responsible for a variety of projects and initiatives to support the markets and improve market structure. Since joining NASDAQ OMX, he has carried out a number of studies on NASDAQ and other markets, developed NASDAQ’s opening and closing auctions, and advised on major corporate ini- tiatives such as the launch of the NASDAQ Options Market and NASDAQ OMX Europe. His current projects include evaluating the impacts of dark pools and high frequency trading on equity markets. Prior to joining NASDAQ OMX, Dr. Hatheway was a finance professor at Penn State University and a re- searcher in market microstructure. He has authored academic articles in the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Intermediation and other leading finance journals. Dr. Hatheway has served as an Economic Fel- low and Senior Research Scholar with the U.S. Securi- ties and Exchange Commission and received his Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University. Terrence Hendershott Associate Professor, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley Terrence Hendershott is currently an associate professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley. He completed his Ph.D. at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. Terry’s current research interests include information technology’s impact and role in financial markets, the structure and regulation of financial markets, and the interaction between trading and asset price dynamics. His writing has appeared in the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal and his research has been written about in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other national newspapers and magazines. His academic work has been published in the Journal of Finance, the Review of Financial Studies, the American Economic Review, the Review of Economic Studies, and other scholarly journals. He edited Elsevier’s Handbook of Economics and Information System. He has received a National Science Foundation CAREER award for his research on electronic trading in financial markets. He was the visiting economist at the New York Stock Exchange in 2006 to 2007. He was a member of the NASDAQ Economic Advisory Board from 2004 to 2007 and Chair in 2007. Eric Hess Eric Hess serves as General Counsel of Direct Edge, the third largest stock market in the United States. Since joining the firm in June 2008, he has overseen all legal and regulatory affairs of the company. Mr. Hess came to Direct Edge from Lehman Brothers, where he was Senior Vice President covering the Equities Divi- sion. Prior to his tenure at Lehman, he was General Counsel for Sungard Trading Systems, a division of Sungard Data Systems and Chief Legal Officer for The BRUT ECN. Mr. Hess has also served as Legal Head of Transactional Services for Bloomberg, L.P. and as an associate for the law firm of Wachtel & Masyr. Markus Kämpe Senior Product Manager, Orc Software Markus Kämpe is a senior trading solutions product manager with Orc Software. As a key member of Orc's product management team since 2001, Markus has been instrumental in bringing to market latest electronic trading enhancements for advanced market making, arbitrage and volatility trading. As a specialist in trading analytics, Markus has been involved in developing analytics for enabling traders to fully exploit their trading strategies. Orc Software provides powerful solutions for the global financial industry in the critical areas of advanced trading and low latency connectivity. Petter Kolm Deputy Director of the Mathematics in Finance M.S. Program and Clinical Associate Professor, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, NYU Petter’s experience and research interests include quantitative trading strategies, portfolio management, financial econometrics, risk management, and dynamic portfolio strategies. Previously, Petter worked in the Quantitative Strategies Group at Goldman Sachs Asset Management where his responsibilities included researching and developing new quantitative investment strategies for the group’s hedge fund. He coauthored the books Financial Modeling of the Equity Market: From CAPM to Cointegration (Wiley, 2006), Trends in Quantitative Finance (CFA Research Institute, 2006), and Robust Portfolio Management and Optimization (Wiley, 2007). Petter is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Portfolio Management and holds a doctorate in mathematics from Yale University, an M.Phil. in applied mathematics from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and an M.S. in mathematics from ETH Zurich. Jon Kroepe Jon Kroeper is Senior Vice President, Quality of Mar- kets in FINRA’s Market Regulation Department. His group is responsible for enforcement of, among oth- ers, the order protection, best execution, best execu- tion, order handling, and Regulation NMS rules. The Quality of Markets Section also is involved in regulat- ing FINRA’s Alternative Display Facility, FINRA’s Trade Reporting Facilities, and FINRA’s TRACE System, as well as providing regulatory services to other SROs, including the Nasdaq Stock Market. Prior to joining FINRA in 2007, Mr. Kroeper served as Counselor to Chairman Christopher Cox of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from 2005 to 2007 and as Counsel to Commissioner Paul S. Atkins in 2005. From 2000 to 2005, Mr. Kroeper was First Vice President and Associate General Counsel at Instinet Group In- corporated. Mr. Kroeper began his career at the SEC in 1994, serving as a Senior Counsel in the Division of Market Regulation and later as Counsel to Commis- Albert Menkveld is Associate Professor of Finance sioner Laura S. Unger. Lee Maclin Adjunct Professor, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, NYU. Founding Partner, Pragma Financial Systems Lee has over twenty years of experience on Wall Street and has worked and consulted for some of its largest and best known firms. Since 1991, Lee has worked primarily in the trading and investment management fields, specializing in the application of statistical methods, modeling, and high frequency simulation. From 1993 to 1997, Lee ran a quantitative trading department for Mint Investment Management, which, at the time, was one of the largest commodity trading advisors in the world. In 2002, Lee was one of the founding partners of Pragma Financial Systems and, for the next six years, served as its Director of Research. At Pragma, Lee’s work focused on the development of optimal execution and dynamic portfolio management tools. He is a frequent speaker on the topic of algorithmic trading and computational finance. Ananth Madhavan Managing Director, BlackRock, Inc Ananth Madhavan leads the global trading research and transition teams at BlackRock Inc.  Ananth also works closely with the global trading team and alpha research groups to design and implement trading strategies capturing liquidity-driven market opportunities.  Ananth was formerly Managing Director of Research of ITG, Inc., a leading provider of technology-based equity-trading services and transaction research to institutional investors and brokers. He was also a member of the management and executive committees of ITG Inc. Previously, he was the Charles B. Thorton Professor of Finance at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, and Assistant Professor of Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He received his PhD in economics from Cornell University and BA from the University of Delhi, India. Oskar Mencer Prior to founding Maxeler Technologies, Oskar Mencer was Member of Technical Staff at Bell Labs, lead- ing the effort on “Computing with FPGAs” within the Computing Sciences Center. He joined Bell Labs after receiving a PhD from Stanford University. Besides his work with Maxeler, Oskar is also affiliated with the Computing Department at Imperial College London and holds a Consulting Professor position at the Geo- physics department at Stanford University. Oskar’s experience includes start-ups and more established companies in Silicon Valley such as DIGITAL, Rockwell and Hitachi (Tokyo). Michael Mendelson Michael Mendelson is a Principal and a portfolio manager at AQR Capital Management LLC, a quantitative asset management firm with approximately $24 billion under management.  Michael is a member of the Firm’s Strategic Planning Committee and its Risk Committee.  Before joining AQR, Michael was a Managing Director at Goldman, Sachs & Co.  There he was the founder of and managed the Quantitative Trading group, responsible for high frequency, statistical arbitrage, and quantitative fundamental equity trading.  He was also a member of the Equities Division Risk Committee.  Michael holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a graduate degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. Albert Menkveld Albert Menkveld is Associate Professor of Finance at VU University Amsterdam. In 2002, he received a Tinbergen PhD from Erasmus University Rotterdam. He spent 18 months of his PhD as visiting scholar at Wharton and Stanford on a Fulbright scholarship. He visited NYU-Stern in 2004-2005 and in 2008-2010.  Albert has published in various journals, e.g., Journal of finance, Journal of Business and econoMic statistics, and Journal of financial interMediation.  In 2007 he received the Pierson medal (“Dutch Bates Clark”) from the Royal Dutch Economic Association; in 2004 a three-year VENI grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO); in 2003 a Lamfalussy scholarship from the European Central Bank; and in 2001 the Josseph de la Vega Prize from the Federation of European Exchanges. Albert has been a member of the academic council of the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (“French SEC”) since 2004. Ronnie Sadka Associate Professor, Boston College, Carroll School of Management Dr. Ronnie Sadka is an associate professor of finance at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management. Professor Sadka’s research focuses on liquidity in financial markets and stock-price modeling. He has developed unique measures of market liquidity and has demonstrated their importance for understanding the profitability of different trading strategies as well as hedge-fund performance. His research also uncovers distinct periodic patterns of stock returns both over the calendar year and during a single trading day. Sadka’s work has appeared in various outlets including the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, and Financial Analysts Journal, and has been covered by the New York Times and CNBC. Prior academic experience includes teaching at the University of Chicago (Booth), New York University (Stern), Northwestern University (Kellogg), and the University of Washington (Foster). Industry experience includes Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Lehman Brothers (quantitative strategies). Sadka currently serves on the economic advisory board of NASDAQ OMX. Professor Sadka earned a B.Sc. (Magna Cum Laude) in industrial engineering and a M.Sc. (Summa Cum Laude) in operations research, both from Tel-Aviv University. He received a Ph.D. in finance from Northwestern University (Kellogg). Alexander Yavorsky Vice President - Senior Analyst, Moody's Invester Service Alex Yavorsky joined the Finance & Securities team in autumn of 2005 as an associate analyst and, after several promotions, became Vice President - Senior Analyst in April of 2009. Alex covers the securities industry, and is a lead analyst on a portfo- lio of more than 10 institutional and retail brokers, and other securities firms. In addition to his lead analyst responsibilities, Alex is also part of the team that covers large investment and universal banks. Alex has authored important and frequently- cited research, and presented to outside audiences and regu- lators, on the systemic and firm-specific risks of OTC deriva- tives, with specific emphasis on credit default swaps. Prior to joining the Finance & Securities team, Alex spent five years in Moody's Systems Development as a Senior Software Engineer.  Alex Yavorsky has a BS in Information Systems from Pace University, and an MBA in Finance, Economics, and Law & Business from the NYU Stern School of Business. Alex is a CFA Level II candidate.