Robert E. Professor Robert E. Whaley is a professor of management at the Owen School of Management at Vanderbilt University. He received a bachelor's degree in business from the University of Alberta, a graduate and doctoral degree in business management from the University of Toronto, and worked at Duke. University, University of Chicago, and University of Alberta. Professor Whaley's current research areas are mainly in the aspects of market microstructure, market volatility, hedge fund performance, index construction and employee compensation. His past research work mainly focused on the analysis of the effect of program trading on stock prices and index futures. and the expiration date effect of options, pricing of options and futures option contracts, and market efficiency. His research results have been published in a number of top theoretical and practical magazines. He also actively participates in large-scale conferences and seminars and has published 6 books, including a textbook on the theory and application of futures and options contracts. Professor Whaley holds editorial positions for several journals, including the Journal of Futures Markets, the Journal of Derivatives, the Journal of Risk, the Pacific Journal of Finance, and the Journal of Frontiers in Futures and Options Research. In the past, he has also served as an editor for Futures Market Review, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Management Science, China Accounting and Finance Review, and Canadian Journal of Management Science. In addition, he is a consultant and authorized agent for more than 50 magazines, and is a former board member of the Western Finance Association and the American Finance Association. Currently, he is a member of the International Advisory Office of the Center for Financial Engineering at the National University of Singapore. Professor Whaley is also a senior expert in derivative contract pricing and risk management and market operations. He serves as a consultant to a number of major investment firms, securities (futures, options and stock) exchanges, government agencies, accounting and legal firms. Whaley cooperated with the Chicago Board Options Exchange to launch the market volatility index (VIX) in 1993, the NASDAQ market volatility index (VXN) in 2000, and the buy and sell index (BXM) in 2001. Throughout his career, Professor Whaley has received a number of awards, including the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award in 1989 for innovations in finance research and the 1991 Fellowship for research, teaching, and service at the Fuqua School of Business. Received the NCNB Staff Award, and in 1993 received the Earl M. Award for his contribution to the futures industry. Combs, Jr. award. He also received awards for many of his research papers, including the Graham and Dodd Scrolls Award in 1986 for outstanding financial articles published in the Journal of Financial Analysis; and the 1987 Graham and Dodd Scrolls Award for outstanding financial articles published in the Journal of Portfolio Management. He won the Bernstein Fabozzi/Jacobs Levy Award for his article; in 1997, he was named the best paper in the Australian Management Journal for his research results on program trading and futures option pricing, and won the E. Yetton Award; in 1993, due to his research results on double-headed trading, he was rated as the best futures paper by the Western Financial Association and received an award from the CBOT; in 1989, due to his research on market volatility prediction, he was awarded by the Northern Finance Association It was rated as the best investment paper by the Finance Association and awarded by the Canadian Securities Association. In 1995, he received an EOE award from the European Department of the Quantitative Investment Research Association for his research on deterministic volatility functions.