Where did you grow up?
I grew up in Romania.

What were your hobbies as a child?
As a child, I took apart anything electronic I could get my hands on—sometimes without knowing how to put it back together—and was fascinated by computers from the moment I first saw one.

Where did you go to university?
I began at ASE Bucharest, where I studied cybernetics, statistics, and informatics. I then came to HEC Lausanne for my bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD in finance.

You did your PhD at SFI and UNIL, do you have any anecdotes or memories from your time as an SFI PhD student?
The best memory is that ideas did not stay in one office for long. Some of the people I met in Lausanne became long-term coauthors, including Michael Hasler, Alexandre Jeanneret, and Julien Cujean. The PhD ended; the conversations did not.

Who are some of the economists, scholars, or mentors who have had an important influence on your work?
Bernard Dumas had the deepest early influence on me. Michael Brennan was an important mentor during my years at UCLA. Darrell Duffie’s work on information percolation became central to my own research. I have also learned a great deal from my coauthors.

What is your main research focus?
I study how information frictions—learning, attention, and dispersed knowledge—move asset prices. I want to know what markets know, how they learn it, and what remains hidden in the price.

What led you to start researching information frictions?
A simple puzzle drew me in: markets contain vast amounts of information, yet no investor sees it all. Prices must gather that knowledge. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they leave fingerprints of what they missed.

What current research topic are you excited about, and why?
I am studying how financial markets piece together information scattered among many investors. Each stock can be priced sensibly by the people trading it, while the market as a whole still misses a pattern visible only when we compare many companies. I want to understand whether that missing big picture explains why certain kinds of stocks tend to earn higher returns than others.

You have recently served in major leadership roles as President of the Northern Finance Association (NFA) and Director of the Financial Research Association (FRA). What did you enjoy most about leading these major associations?
What I enjoyed most was seeing the field as a whole. Each conference receives around a thousand submissions, and reading many of those papers gave me a rare view of the questions researchers were asking and where finance was moving. It was equally rewarding to give strong work—especially by young scholars—the serious discussion it deserved.

You studied for your Bachelor’s, Master’s, and PhD at HEC Lausanne. What is it like to be back in Lausanne teaching in the classrooms where you used to sit as a student?
It is strange in the best way. I once sat in those rooms trying to understand finance; now I stand at the front and try to make it clear. The room is the same. The responsibility is different.

What are you most looking forward to as part of the SFI community?
I am most looking forward to the research conversations—with colleagues, young faculty, and PhD students across the SFI community. Ideas sharpen when they move between people and institutions, and SFI is built for that kind of exchange.

Do you have a productivity habit or routine that works well for you?
I start early and protect the first few hours of the day for research, before email and meetings take over.

What languages do you speak?
Romanian, French, and English.

Tell us something exciting that happened to you in the last five to ten years? (it doesn’t have to be related to research)?
After fourteen years in the United States and Canada, I moved back to the Lausanne region in 2026. I returned to the university where my academic life began, this time as a professor.

What do you do in your spare time?
I spend much of my spare time with my family. My brother and I play pétanque regularly, and I also enjoy walking and the occasional hike.

What is your favorite quote?
Jack London’s Spencerian advice to writers has stayed with me: economize the reader’s attention. Attention is scarce, human, and easily lost. A sentence must earn the next one.