Dion Bongaerts is an Associate Professor of Finance at RSM Erasmus University and Academic Director Fintech at the Erasmus Center for Data Analytics. He specializes in the behavior of credit rating agencies, the pricing of credit risky instruments, the origins and effects of market illiquidity, and FinTech (with a focus on Blockchain). His work has been presented at major conferences around the world, including the AFA, WFA, EFA, and NBER meetings and published in top tier academic journals including the Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, and the Journal of Financial Economics. He has received several grants, including a Veni and a Blockchain Research grant from the Dutch National Science Foundation (NWO) and a Lamfalussy Fellowship from the ECB. Dr Bongaerts holds a PhD degree in Finance from the University of Amsterdam, an MSc in Econometrics from Maastricht University, and has been a visiting scholar at Yale School of Management, University of Pittsburgh, and the Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing. Moreover, he has several years of professional experience as a risk management quant at ABN-AMRO bank.