Anatoly (Alec) Schmidt holds PhD in physics from Latvian University. He has been a quantitative analyst in the financial industry since 1997. Alec also teaches at the Financial Engineering program of Stevens Institute of Technology. He has published three books: Statistical Thermodynamics of Classical Plasmas (Energoatomizdat, Moscow, 1991), Quantitative Finance for Physicists: An Introduction (Elsevier, 2004), and Financial Markets and Trading: An Introduction to Market Microstructure and Trading Strategies (Wiley, 2011), and multiple academic papers on statistical physics, biophysics, econophysics, agent-based modeling of financial markets, market microstructure, and algorithmic trading.