Ronald Kahn is Global Head of Scientific Equity Research at BlackRock in San Francisco. He is responsible for upholding and enhancing BlackRock’s research standards. He also chairs BlackRock’s Global and US Proxy Committees. He is a well-known expert on portfolio management, risk modeling, and quantitative investing. He has published numerous articles on investment management, and has written with Richard Grinold the influential book Active Portfolio Management: Quantitative Theory and Applications. The two of them are the 2013 winners of James R. Vertin award, presented periodically by the CFA Institute to recognize individuals who have produced a body of research notable for its relevance and enduring value to investment professionals. He is a 2007 winner of the Bernstein Fabozzi/Jacobs Levy award for best article in the Journal of Portfolio Management. He is on the editorial advisory boards of the Journal of Portfolio Management, the Financial Analysts Journal, and the Journal of Investment Consulting. The 2007 book, How I Became a Quant, includes his essay describing his transition from physics to finance. He teaches the equities half of the course, “International Equity and Currency Markets” (MFE 230G) in UC Berkeley’s Master of Financial Engineering Program. He received an AB in Physics, summa cum laude, from Princeton University and a PhD in Physics from Harvard University. He won an AAAS Mass Media Science Fellowship at Newsweek during the summer of 1983.