Introduction

Professor H. Henry Cao is currently a Professor of Finance at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (CKGSB) and a member of the American Finance Association. He previously taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Professor Cao’s research focuses on portfolio management, option pricing, asset pricing, market microstructure, and international finance.

In recent years, he has published extensively in leading international journals including the Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, and Journal of Financial Economics, with his research widely cited. He was nominated twice for the Smith-Breeden Prize (best paper award) of the Journal of Finance in 1998 and 2000. He received the Best Paper Award in Emerging Market Research from the Northern Finance Association, the Best Paper Award Most Relevant to Practitioners from the Western Finance Association, and the Third Best Paper Award at the 2004 China International Finance Conference.

Professor Cao serves on the editorial board of the Annals of Economics and Finance, and is Co-Editor of the International Review of Finance and Associate Editor of the China Financial Review.

Prof. Xin Chang is a Professor of Finance, Director of the Centre for Sustainable Finance and Innovation (CSFI), and the Associate Dean (Research) overseeing PhD programs and research activities at Nanyang Business School.

Prof. Chang holds his BS and MA in Finance from Tsinghua University, and a PhD in Finance from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

He specializes in corporate finance, especially sustainable finance, capital structure, mergers and acquisitions, and stock valuation. He taught various courses to undergraduate, honors, master, and PhD students at HKUST, the University of Melbourne, the University of Cambridge, and NTU.

Xin was awarded the Dean’s Award for Research Excellence in 2006 and the Dean’s Certificate for Excellence in Teaching in 2007 at the University of Melbourne. At NTU, he was the Researcher of the Year for the Division of Banking and Finance in 2009, the MBA Teacher of the Year in 2011, and the Teacher of the Year for the Division of Banking and Finance in 2013. He also won the Peter Brownell Award for Best Publication in Accounting and Finance in 2007, the Best Paper awards at the 16th SFM Conference in 2008, the 19th SFM Conference in 2011, the 4th World Business Ethics Forum in 2012, and TCFA’s (The Chinese Finance Association) best paper award on corporate finance. He received the inaugural Best PhD Supervisor Award (the Graduate College Mentoring Award) from NTU in 2020.

Prof. Xiaolei Liu is a Boya Distinguished Professor at Peking University, Chair of the Department of Finance, and Professor of Finance and Accounting at the Guanghua School of Management. She serves as a member of the National Advisory Committee for Master of Finance Professional Degree Education and Deputy Director of the Faculty of Economics and Management at Peking University.

She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Rochester, USA. Her academic papers have received numerous prestigious domestic and international awards, including the An Zijie International Trade Research Award, the Best Paper Award of Journal of Financial Research, the Best Doctoral Dissertation Award of the Southern Finance Association, the Best Corporate Finance Paper Award of the Western Finance Association, the Best Paper Award of the Asian Finance Association, the Best Paper Award of the China International Conference in Finance, and the Best Paper Award of the China Financial Research Conference.

She previously served as an Associate Editor of Financial Management. Currently, she is an Associate Editor of Journal of Empirical Finance, Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, and Journal of International Trade Issues. Prof. Liu’s research has been published in many leading international and domestic academic journals, including Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Monetary Economics, Management Science, Journal of Management Sciences in China, Journal of Financial Research, and International Financial Research.

She has been honored with the Zeng Xianzi Outstanding Teaching Award from Peking University. Her research interests lie in financial markets and corporate finance, with a recent focus on China-related issues.Prior to joining the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University, she was a tenured faculty member at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Prof. Jianjun Miao is a Tsingshan Chair Professor of Econnomics at School of Economics, Tsingshan Institute for Advanced Business Studies, and Academy of Financial Research, Zhejiang University.

Prof. Miao received his BS in Mathematics from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1992, his MA in economics from Zhongshan University in 1995, and his PhD in Economics from the University of Rochester in 2003.

He was a former Professor of Economics at Boston University. He is a Fellow of SAET and a Senior Fellow of ABFER. He is an associate editor of Economic Theory and Macroeconomic Dynamics and a former associate editor of Quantitative Economics and Journal of Mathematical Economics. He is the founder of the China International Conference in Macroeconomics (CICM) and the China Forum of Macroeconomic Research. 

His research fields are macroeconomics and finance and their interface with decision theory, information economics, public finance, and industrial organization. His main research areas are the macroeconomic implications of bubbles and crashes, theory and applications of decision making under uncertainty, rational inattention, business cycles, fiscal and monetary policies, dynamic contracts, asset pricing, and corporate finance. 

Professor Miao has published over 60 papers in major international journals, 6 of which are in top 5 economics journals American Economic Review and Econometrica, 2 are in top 3 science journals PNAS joint with Nobel Prize Winner Lars Hansen, 5 are in top 3 finance journals Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics and Review of Financial Studies, 17 are in top economics journals such as American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, International Economic Review, Journal of Economic Theory, , Journal of Monetary Economics, Quantitative Economics, and Theoretical Economics. He published three books and won a best paper prize in 2009 CICF.

Prof. Hui Xiong holds esteemed positions at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) as the Associate Vice-President for Knowledge Transfer and a Chair Professor of the Artificial Intelligence Thrust.

Prof. Xiong holds a BS in Automation from University of Science and Technology of China, an MS in Computer Science from National University of Singapore, and a PhD in Computer Science from University of Minnesota.

His research interests include data science and artificial intelligence, and he has published over 400 papers in his fields. His Google Citation amounts to over 50,000, with an h-index of 96. He has received numerous honors and awards for his outstanding academic contributions, such as the 2021 AAAI Best Paper Award, the 2017 IEEE ICDM Outstanding Service Award, and the 2011 IEEE ICDM Best Research Paper Award. For his outstanding contributions to data mining and mobile computing, he was elected as a Fellow of AAAI, AAAS, CAAI, IEEE, and was elected as the ACM Distinguished Scientist. 

Prof. Xiong currently serves as the ACM SIGKDD Secretary, the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Encyclopedia of GIS, the Deputy Director of the CCF Expert Committee on Big Data, and the Editor-in-Chief of Nature npj | Artificial Intelligence. He has served regularly on the organization and program committees of numerous conferences, including as a Program Co-Chair of the Industrial and Government Track for the 18th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD), a Program Co-Chair for the IEEE 2013 International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM), a General Co-Chair for the 2015 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM), and a Program Co-Chair of the Research Track for the 2018 ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining.

In addition to his academic contributions, Dr. Xiong previously served as Chief Scientist (Smart City) and Deputy Dean at Baidu Research Institute, where he led five research labs and made significant impacts on industry practices. He is also dedicated to education, having supervised approximately 30 PhD students. Many of his graduates now hold faculty positions at prominent research universities, including the University of Tennessee–Knoxville, the University of Arizona–Tucson, Stony Brook University, George Mason University, ESCP Business School–Paris, the University of Kansas, Arizona State University, and the City University of Hong Kong.

Prof. Dacheng Xiu is the Joseph Sondheimer Professor of Econometrics and Statistics, Booth School of Business.

Prof. Xiu holds a BS in Mathematics from University of Science and Technology of China, an MA and a PhD in Applied Mathematics from Princeton University.

Prof. Xiu serves as a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He currently holds and has previously held several editorial positions, including Co-Editor of Journal of Business & Economic Statistics and Journal of Financial Econometrics, as well as Associate Editor for journals such as Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of the American Statistical Association, Management Science, and Journal of Econometrics.

He has received several recognitions for his research, including Fellow of the Society for Financial Econometrics, Fellow of the Journal of Econometrics, Swiss Finance Institute Outstanding Paper Award, AQR Insight Award, Dimensional Fund Advisors Prize, Bates-White Prize, and best paper prizes at various conferences. He has been recognized as one of Poets & Quants’ Best 40-under-40 Business School Professors.