Jimmie Lenz
Engineering Graduate and Professional Programs
Executive Director, FinTech Master's Program
Bio
Dr. Jimmie Lenz
Lafitte Director, Master of Engineering in Financial Technology at Duke University
Jimmie also has a secondary appointment as the Irene and Frank Salerno Visiting Professor of Financial Economics. At Duke he leads the Digital Asset Research and Engineering Collaborative (DAREC), an open-source lab for research into all aspects of digital assets. He is an experienced executive and scholar in the fields of quantitative analysis, risk management, and emerging technologies.
Lenz has held several senior management roles within the finance community including leading a NYSE broker dealer with foreign and domestic operations, Chief Risk Officer and Chief Credit Officer at a top three broker dealer, Head of Technology Risk and the Head of Predictive Analytics for one of the largest Wealth Management firms in the US. Along with a colleague Jimmie Co-Founded the Digital Assets@Duke conference series and Co-hosts the popular Coffee & Crypto podcast with Lee and Jimmie.
Jimmie continues to work in industry, often called upon as an expert witness in all types of litigation matters. He also works as an Executive Advisor on growth and innovation at nCino, a SAS company. His work and experience have allowed him the opportunity to share his perspectives on financial innovation through congressional testimony.
Jimmie holds an undergraduate degree from the University of South Carolina, a Master of Science in Finance from Washington University in Saint Louis, and Doctor of Business Administration-Finance from Washington University's Olin Business School. Jimmie currently serves on the Advisory Board for Promethium. Lenz’ research has been published in numerous academic journals and he has patents and pending patents for his work.
Education
- D.B.A. Washington University in St. Louis, 2016
Positions
- Executive In Residence in the Engineering Graduate and Professional Programs
- Executive Director of the FinTech Engineering Masters Program
- Lafitte Director in the Master of Engineering in Financial Technology
Courses Taught
- MENG 553: Master of Engineering Assessment
- MENG 552: Master of Engineering Supplemental Internship
- MENG 551: Master of Engineering Internship/Project Assessment
- MENG 550: Master of Engineering Internship/Project
- FINTECH 591: Special Readings in Financial Technology
- FINTECH 590: Advanced Topics in Financial Technology
- FINTECH 564: Blockchain
- FINTECH 543: Quantitative Investment Analysis (PE, VC, and Traditional)
- FINTECH 536: Robo-Advising: The Future of Investing?
- FINTECH 522: Asset Pricing and Risk Management
- FINTECH 505: Mid-Program Residency
- FINTECH 501: Financial Technology Seminar
- EGRCOOP 501: Engineering Graduate Cooperative Education 1
- CYBERSEC 505: Mid-Program Residency
Publications
- Lenz JH, Tymcio R. GENIUS at Work in the US Financial System. Journal of Risk and Financial Management. 2025 Nov 1;18(11).
- Hemesath A, Tian WM, Polascik BW, Joseph S, Dardani D, Villacreses DC, et al. Regulatory Considerations of Non-Fungible Tokens in Healthcare. Journal of Medical Regulation. 2025 Jan 1;111(1):26u201331.
- Brini A, Lenz J. A comparison of cryptocurrency volatility-benchmarking new and mature asset classes. Financial Innovation. 2024 Dec 1;10(1).
- Brini A, Lenz J. Pricing cryptocurrency options with machine learning regression for handling market volatility. Economic Modelling. 2024 Jul 1;136.
- Brini A, Lenz J. A Comparison of Cryptocurrency Volatility-benchmarking New and Mature Asset Classes. 2024.
- Brini A, Lenz J. Assessing the resiliency of investors against cryptocurrency market crashes through the leverage effect. Economics Letters. 2022 Nov 1;220.
- Brini A, Lenz J. Bitcoin ETFs: Measuring the Performance of This New Market Niche. 2022 Jul 8;
- Nach H, Salampasis D, Vulkan N, Zachariadis M, Lenz J. Financial technologies on campus: The rise of FinTech in higher education. In: 27th Annual Americas Conference on Information Systems Amcis 2021. 2021.
In The News
- Exploring the Future of Digital Assets (Jan 10, 2023 | )
- Jimmie Lenz on Why an NFT Makes for a More Secure, Versatile Diploma (May 9, 2022 | )
- Duke Engineeringu2019s FinTech Program Sends Certificates to Coursera Students as NFTs (Jan 19, 2022 | )