Gikas A. Hardouvelis (University of Piraeus, Greece) was the recipient of the 2015 FEBS National Award for his outstanding contributions to finance research. Gigas Hardouvelis is Professor of Finance and Economics at the Department of Banking and Financial Management at the School of Finance and Statistics of the University of Piraeus-Greece. He is the former Minister of Finance of the Hellenic Republic from June 2014 following the cabinet resuffle to January 2015 till the Greek Elections. He was the Chief Economist, Head of Economic Research and Member of the Executive Committee of the EUROBANK Group (2005-2014). He is Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London and at the Centre for Money, Banking and Institutions of Surrey Business School. He is a member of the Cyprus International Institute of Management and the Board of Directors of the Hellenic Harvard Foundation. During the semester of November 2011 – May 2012 of the coalition government of National Unity, he served as the Director of the Economic Office of the Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Economics (1983, University of California, Berkeley –USA), and M.Sc. & B.A. degrees in Applied Mathematics (1978, Harvard University, Massachusetts, USA). He has been Assistant Professor at Barnard College, Columbia University (1983-1989), Associate Professor and subsequently Full Professor at Rutgers University (1989-1993). He was president and then member of the Academic Council of the Hellenic Banks Association and its EBF-EMAC representative and member of the Foundation for the Economic & Industrial Research and member. He served as a Research Adviser & Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (1987-1993) and as an Adviser of the Bank of Greece for the next two years (1994-1995), where he also acted as Second Alternate to the Governor at the European Monetary Institute (precursor to the ECB). Between1996-2000 he held the post of Chief Economist at the National Bank of Greece, where he restructured the Economic Analysis Division, created the Risk Management Division, the Assets-Liabilities Management Department, and the Investors Relations Department. He also played a critical role in the establishment of the Athens Derivatives Exchange, as an original member of its Board of Directors (1997-2000). During 2000-2004, he was Director of the Economic Office of the Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis. His academic work extends in Finance and Macroeconomics and is published in many internationally renowned journals, including the American Economic Review, the Journal of Finance, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Monetary Economics and many others. He has been included in the Hall of Fame of the top-50 individual publishers worldwide in applied econometrics over 1989 to 1995. (See p. 432, in Badi H. Baltagi, "Applied Econometrics Rankings: 1989-1995", Journal of Applied Econometrics 1999, Vol. 14, pp. 423-441). His work on margin requirements had a crucial impact on shaping the reform of the legal framework governing the markets of futures on stock indices in the US.