LIN  WILLIAM  CONG

Lin William Cong is the Rudd Family Professor of Management (endowed faculty chair by the Rudd Family Foundation) and a Tenured Professor of Finance at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University SC Johnson College of Business. He is also the founding faculty director for the FinTech Initiative at Cornell, a faculty scientist at the Initiatives for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts (IC3), and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Prior to joining Cornell, he was an assistant professor of Finance and Ph.D. advisor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and faculty member at the Center for East Asian Studies. He is formerly a Kauffman Junior Faculty Fellow, a Poets & Quants World Best Business School Professor, a 2022 Top Quant Professor, a doctoral fellow at the Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies, and the George Shultz Scholar at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. Cong has served as a Finance Editor for the Management Science, and as associate or advisory editors for the Journal of Financial Intermediation, Journal of Portfolio Management, Journal of Corporate Finance, and the Journal of Banking and Finance, among other editorial roles. He is also a member of multiple professional organizations such as the American Economic Association, European Finance Association, and the Econometric Society. 

   Cong researches on financial economics, information economics, FinTech and Economic Data Science, Entrepreneurship, and China. His academic interests include financial innovation, mechanism and information design, blockchains, cryptocurrencies, digital economy, real options, financial policy and markets in China, machine learning, AI for Finance, and alternative data. His recent work has focused on the intersection of technology, data science, and finance. He and his coauthors have developed and introduced goal-oriented search and interpretable AI for finance, foundations of tokenomics (categorization of tokens, cryptocurrency pricing, and optimal token monetary policy design, etc.), industrial organization and system design in blockchains and DeFi, and blockchain analytics and forensics that helps practitioners, investors, and regulators, among others. His research has been featured in top academic journals and media such as Bloomberg, CNN, The Economist, Forbes, VOX, and Washington Post, and has been recognized with a number of accolades including over 40 conference best paper prizes and competitive grants. He has also been invited to speak and teach at hundreds of world-renowned universities, venture funds, technology firms, investment and trading shops, and government agencies such as IMF, Ant Financial, SEC, and federal reserve banks.

   Cong has advised FinTech organizations and investment firms such as Ansatz Capital, Ava Labs, Blackrock, Dfinity (incubator), and Chainlink (as the first Senior Economic Advisor and Senior Economist), Modular Asset Management, Wall Street Blockchain Alliance, as well as government and regulatory agencies such as the New York State Department of Financial Services, Bank of Canada, and Asset Management Association of China. His coauthors and he were among the earliest to point the environmental harm of mining pools, wash trading on unregulated crypto exchanges, the problem of vertical integration in CeFi that underlie the FTX collapse, and the lack of inclusion in current Web3 ecosystems. As such, he has also been consulted regarding prominent FinTech litigation cases, by FBI agent and New York State Office of the Attorney General, among others, and was invited to advise regulators and federal prosecutors to fight against manipulations in cryptocurrency markets and frauds. 

   Cong earned a Ph.D. in Finance and a MS in Statistics from Stanford University, where he served as the president of Ph.D. students association, received the Asian American Award for Graduate Leadership, and was recognized with the Lieberman Fellowship for outstanding contributions in research, teaching, and university service. He also holds dual degrees from Harvard University where he graduated summa cum laude and top in the Physics department, with an A.M. in Physics, an A.B. in Math & Physics, a minor in Economics, and a language citation in French. Cong is a native of Shenyang, China, and has lived in Singapore and sojourned in Japan and the UK. Cong enjoys Chinese calligraphy, reading, sports, fitness, guitar, as well as learning French and Japanese. Cong is also passionate about education, China-U.S. relations, technology innovations, and integrating fundamental valuation, quantitative investing, and financial technology in asset management, for which he created the course "Quantimental Investment" while at the University of Chicago.