Prof. Aswath Damodaran is widely regarded as the world's foremost authority on valuation, earning him the nickname "Dean of Valuation" among academics and practitioners alike. He is a Professor of Finance at the Stern School of Business at New York University, where he teaches corporate finance and valuation in the MBA program, a valuation course for undergraduates, and occasional short-term classes on both topics. He received his MBA and Ph.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles, and his research interests lie in valuation, portfolio management, and applied corporate finance.

His papers have been published in leading academic journals, including the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, and the Review of Financial Studies. Beyond his research, Damodaran is celebrated as an exceptional teacher: he received the Earl Cheit Outstanding Teaching Award at UC Berkeley in 1985, the Stern School of Business Excellence in Teaching Award nine times, and was the youngest-ever recipient of NYU's University-wide Distinguished Teaching Award in 1990. Business Week named him one of the top twelve business school professors in the United States in 1994 and, in a 2011 poll of MBA students, the most popular business school professor in the country. He is a prolific author, having written four books on equity valuation ("Damodaran on Valuation," "Investment Valuation," "The Dark Side of Valuation," "The Little Book of Valuation"), two on corporate finance ("Corporate Finance: Theory and Practice," "Applied Corporate Finance: A User's Manual"), and several further books on portfolio management and risk. He shares his ideas and expertise with a global audience through his widely followed blog, "Musings on Markets".