Somewhere along the way in my quest to keep up with the banking and financial services industry, I got on the MIT Sloan School of Management’s Thinking Forward email list. This week, they sent me an interesting newsletter article about President Joe Biden’s choice to head up the Securities and Exchange Commission — MIT Sloan professor Gary Gensler. Previously head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the Obama administration, Gensler joined the MIT Sloan faculty in 2018. Since then, he’s authored a series of research papers that provide insights into the increasing intersection of technology and finance that has made fintech, blockchain and cryptocurrencies the buzzwords of the industry. At the risk of appearing wonky, I’m passing along this article with links to a selection of ideas and insights from Gensler, including a recent working paper on deep learning and financial stability, and two free MIT OpenCourseWare classes he developed. As NPR reported this week, Gensler is an unusual pick for SEC chair — a math genius who made a fortune on Wall Street early in his career at Goldman Sachs, but who has since become a tough market watchdog.