Heitor Almeida is Stanley C. and Joan J. Golder Chair in Corporate Finance and academic director of I-degrees at Gies College of Business. He joined the University of Illinois in 2007, and also works as a research associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research specialties include financial constraints, liquidity management, business groups, financial distress, innovation, and stock repurchases. He serves or has served as associate editor for numerous financial journals, and is currently in that role for the Journal of Financial Intermediation and the Journal of Banking and Finance. He will become managing editor at the Journal of Corporate Finance in January 2021. Almeida received two BAs, one from the Federal University of Minas Gerais at Belo Horizonte in 1991, the other from Central University Una at Belo Horizonte in 1993. He went on to earn a master’s degree in economics from Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago in 2000.

Elena Carletti is a Professor of Finance  and Dean for Research at Bocconi University, where she also serves in the Executive Committee of the newly established Institute for European Policymaking and directs the Unit "Banking, Finance and Regulation" at the Baffi Carefin Center for Applied Research. In addition, she is the Director of the Banking and Corporate Finance Programme as well as of the Research Policy Network on European Financial Architecture at the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). 

She is a member of the Board of Directors of Unicredit Group, where she is the Chairwoman of the Internal Controls and Risk Committee, and also a Member of the Expert Group on Bank Supervision for the European Parliament. 

Elena Carletti is the founder Director of the Florence School of Banking and Finance at the European University Institute, where she now serves as scientific advisor. She has been a member of the Scientific Committee “Paolo Baffi Lecture” at the Bank of Italy from 2015 to 2021, and a member  of the Advisory Scientific Committee of the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) from 2015 to 2023. 

She was President of the European Finance Association in 2022 and Professor of Economics at the European University Institute from 2008 to 2013, holding a joint chair in the Economics Department and the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies. Prior to that, she was Associate Professor at Goethe University in Frankfurt and Assistant Professor at the University of Mannheim.

Ms. Carletti holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the London School of Economics. She has published extensively in the most prestigious international journals on topics concerning Financial Intermediation, Financial Crises and Regulation, Competition Policy, Corporate Governance and Sovereign Debt.

Bjørn Eraker is the Bill Nygren Chair of Investments and professor of Finance at the Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

His research interests include asset pricing, derivatives, econometrics of financial markets, and equilibrium modeling.

Professor Eraker's work has been published in several journals, including the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Econometrics and Mathematical Finance. He is known for his work in estimating econometric models of stock and derivatives markets, as well as developing models for pricing derivative securities.

Prior to joining Wisconsin, he was on the faculty of Duke University, where he was an assistant professor in the Department of Economics. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business in 2001.

Bernard Herskovic is an assistant professor of finance with broad interests in financial economics, economic theory and macroeconomics. The native Brazilian’s most recent research shows that changes in input-output network are sources of systematic risk reflected in equilibrium asset prices. This work is the starting point for future research projects that apply network theory into asset pricing and financial economics. His other papers cover a wide range of disciplines, from idiosyncratic volatility of stock returns to endogenous network formation in an environment of information acquisition.

As a Ph.D. candidate, he developed and taught a summer course for economics majors at New York University that focused on international trade and finance. That experience, combined with his graduate training as a teaching assistant, primed him for his current position at Anderson. He applies the same dedication to teaching as he does to his research: "I try to be as mathematically precise as possible when describing concepts in class, but keeping the underlying intuition in mind."

Janis Skrastins is an Associate Professor of Finance at the David Eccles School of Business, University of Utah. His research lies at the intersection of banking, financial intermediation, organizational design, labor economics, and development economics. His work has been published in leading journals including the American Economic Review, Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Political Economy, Management Science, and American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.

Professor Skrastins studies how financial institutions shape labor markets, firm behavior, and economic development. His recent research examines financial access and labor market outcomes, decision-making delegation in banks, unemployment insurance and firm risk-taking, and the role of contracting technologies in credit markets. His work has received multiple best paper awards and recognition from institutions such as the Banco Central do Brasil and major international conferences.

He earned his Ph.D. in Finance from London Business School and previously served on the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis (Olin Business School). He has held visiting positions at Harvard University and the Central Bank of Brazil and is an invited researcher at J-PAL.

Rafael Matta é Professor de Finanças na SKEMA Business School, na França. Antes de ingressar na SKEMA, atuou como Assistant Professor of Finance na Amsterdam Business School, da Universidade de Amsterdã.

Sua pesquisa concentra-se em temas como fricções contratuais, proteção a credores, efeitos de retroalimentação (feedback effects) e leis de falência, analisando seus impactos sobre empresas financeiras e não financeiras. Também investiga a transmissão da política monetária, crises bancárias (bank panics) e a arquitetura regulatória do sistema financeiro.

Seus trabalhos foram destacados na mídia financeira e jurídica internacional, incluindo Bloomberg e o Harvard Law School Forum, além de contribuírem para a formulação de regras e políticas públicas em instituições como a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) e o Banco Central Europeu (ECB). Possui publicações em periódicos de excelência em Economia e Finanças, incluindo revistas que integram a lista Financial Times 50, como Review of Financial Studies, Management Science e Review of Finance. Seus estudos também foram apresentados nos principais congressos internacionais da área, como os encontros anuais da American Finance Association, Western Finance Association e European Finance Association.

Atualmente, é Associate Editor da International Review of Law and Economics. É doutor em Economia pela University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2012), onde foi bolsista Fulbright, e mestre e bacharel em Economia pela Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG).