Professor Kempf is Professor of Finance at the University of Cologne and a member of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts. He is the managing director of the CFR Centre for Financial Research and was in charge of the Cologne PhD School in Risk Management and was a member of the Executive Board of the Cologne Graduate School. Professor Kempf has been teaching at the University of Cologne since 1999. He obtained his doctoral degree and his venia legendi from the University of Mannheim.

Professor Kempf has published extensively on asset and risk management. His current research focuses on mutual and hedge funds as well as on liquidity and estimation risk. His research has been published in leading academic journals like the Journal of Financial Economics, the Review of Financial Studies, and the Review of Finance. He regularly presents his research results at conferences and in the national and international press. Prof. Kempf is also an advisory consultant for companies and serves as a consultant for the industry.