Andrew Cairns

Professor of Financial Mathematics, Heriot-Watt University

Andrew Cairns is Professor of Financial Mathematics at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh.

He is well known both in the UK and internationally for his research in financial risk management for pension plans and life insurers. These interests in the assessment of financial risk have led to further research in the field of financial mathematics. Within this field he has developed a new model for bond-price dynamics for use in the measurement and management of long-term interest-rate risks in pensions and life insurance. More recently he has been working on the modelling of longevity risk: how this can be modelled, measured and priced, and how it can be transferred to the financial markets. Amongst his work in this field, he has developed a number of new and innovative stochastic mortality models. He is an active member of the UK and international actuarial profession in both research and education: he qualified as a Fellow of the Faculty of Actuaries in 1993; since 1996 he has been editor of the leading international actuarial journal ASTIN Bulletin - The Journal of the International Actuarial Association and has been editor-in-chief since 2005; and in 2005 he was elected as a corresponding member of the Swiss Association of Actuaries.

In 2008 he was awarded the Halmstad Prize for his paper Pricing Death: Frameworks for the Valuation and Securitization of Mortality Risk co-authored with David Blake and Kevin Dowd.

In 2004 Professor Cairns completed a textbook entitled "Interest Rate Models: An Introduction" published by Princeton University Press.

John Donghui Chen

Chief Actuarial Officer, PICC Property and Casualty Co Ltd

John Donghui Chen is the Chief Actuarial Officer at PICC P&C in Beijing. He is a member of CIRC Solvency Standards Committee. He has served in various leadership roles namely in the CIRC solvency II (P&C) project, the CTP industry task force and the Insurance Association Motor Insurance Working group. He is a Guest Professor at Tsinghua University and China Renmin University. Chen received his Ph.D. degree at the Monash University in 1999.

Morton Lane

President of Lane Financial LLC

Morton Lane is the Director of the Master’s Program in Financial Engineering at the University of Illinois and the President of Lane Financial LLC. Dr. Lane has devoted much of the last decade specializing in the intersection of insurance and capital markets. As a pioneer in the move to securitize insurance he has provided advice, been engaged in consulting for a wide list of clients and has conducting several securitizations directly. He edited Alternative Risk Strategies, voted runner up to the Kulp-Wright risk management book award of 2002 and more recently edited Alternative (Re)insurance Strategies 2012; both describe the burgeoning world of insurance securitization. Previously, Dr. Lane was President of Discount Futures, voted 1989 Futures House of the Year by The International Financing Review and co-authored two books, The Treasury Bond Basis and Eurodollar Futures and Options, which became industry standards. He taught at the London Graduate School of Business, the University of Chicago, the University of New South Wales and currently at the University of Illinois. Dr. Lane is a graduate of the University of Birmingham and earned his Ph. D. at the University of Texas.

Atsuyuki Kogure

Keio University

Dr. Atsuyuki Kogure is a Professor of Statistics and Finance in the Faculty of Policy Management at Keio University, Japan. He obtained his Ph.D. in Statistics from Yale University. His previous academic experiences include visiting researchers at the Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies in Bank of Japan and at Nanyang Business School in Singapore. His main interest lies in the areas of risk modeling in insurance and finance. His recent research has focused on Bayesian methods for modeling multivariate risks and their applications to mortality-linked derivative pricing.

Evan Leite

Risk Analyst, Risk Lighthouse LLC

Evan Leite is a Director of Operations at Risk Lighthouse LLC.  Additionally, he is responsible for leading client projects, risk modeling and analysis as well as project management.  He works primarily on non-traditional actuarial consulting and product R&D.

He is experienced in statistical modeling and data mining techniques, with an emphasis on survival analysis, distribution fitting, and simulation. 

Evan is currently pursuing fellowship in the Casualty Actuary Society.  Evan graduated from Georgia State University with a Master of Actuarial Science degree in 2011. He also received his B.S. degree in Statistics from the University of Georgia in 2009.

Greg Niehaus

University of South Carolina

Greg Niehaus is a Professor of Insurance and Finance at the Darla Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina.  He received his Ph.D. degree in Economics from Washington University, and has taught at the University of Michigan and Michigan State University.  He has served as the Finance Department Chair and as Senior Associate Dean for Research and Academics at the Moore School.   He currently teaches and conducts research on risk management, insurance economics, and corporate finance.  He has received several teaching awards and is the coauthor with Scott Harrington of the textbook, Risk Management and Insurance, 2nd edition.  He has published articles in Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Finance, Journal of Business, Accounting Review, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Financial Intermediation, and the Journal of Risk and Insurance.

Hua Chen

Temple University

Dr. Hua Chen is an Assistant Professor of Risk, Insurance, and Healthcare Management in the Fox School of Business at Temple University. He received his Ph.D. degree in risk management and insurance at Georgia State University in 2008. His research interests include corporate risk management, risk modeling and securitization, and actuarial mathematics. Dr. Chen has publications in top tier journals in insurance and actuarial science, including Journal of Risk and Insurance, Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, North American Actuarial Journal, and Asia-Pacific Journal of Risk and Insurance. Dr. Chen coordinates the Robert A. Hedges Research Seminar Series in the Department of Risk, Insurance and Healthcare Management, and is the faculty advisor for the M.S. Program in Actuarial Science at Temple University.

Jack S K Chang

California State University

Professor Jack S.K. Chang is with California State University, Los Angeles, and has taught two years each at NUS and HKU. His research is multidisciplinary across RMI, finance, and OR.  He has published in Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Management Science, IEEE-Reliability, Journal of Risk & Insurance, Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, ASTIN Bulletin, etc. His current research agenda includes catastrophe risk management in forecasting, catastrophe modeling, valuation and optimum allocation,   mortality risk management, volatility trading and forecasting, and supply chain management.

Jiang Cheng

Shanghai University of Finance and Economics

Jiang Cheng is currently an Assistant Professor of Finance at the School of Finance, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. He also serves as a research fellow at the Networks Financial Institute, Scott College of Business Risk and the Insurance Research Center, National Chengchi University. He earned his Ph.D. degree in Risk Management and Insurance from Temple University. He has published his work in journals including Journal of Risk and Insurance, Geneva papers on Risk and Insurance, Journal of Insurance Issues among others. He specializes in insurance regulation, corporate governance, and insurance accounting. Before joining SUFE, he taught at the Department of Accounting, Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Johnny Siu-Hang Li

University of Waterloo

Dr. Li has made significant research contribution to the area of longevity risk. Part of his paper “Developing Mortality Improvement Formulae: The Canadian Insured Lives Case Study” is used in the Canadian Institute of Actuaries (CIA) Guidance Material. His research in this area has brought him several awards, including the Harold D. Skipper Best Paper Award from the Asia-Pacific Risk and Insurance Association and the Edward A. Lew Award (2nd place) from the Society of Actuaries. He is currently an Associate Editor of the North American Actuarial Journal and a member of the board of directors of the Asia-Pacific Risk and Insurance Association.

Homepage: http://math.uwaterloo.ca/statistics-and-actuarial-science/people-profiles/johnny-li

Joon Ho Hwang

Korea University

Joon Ho Hwang is an Associate Professor of Finance at Korea University Business School since 2007. Before joining Korea University, he was at the University of Memphis as an assistant professor. He earned his Ph.D. in Finance from Indiana University, Bloomington in 2005. He received M.S. in Management Engineering and B.S. in Industrial Management from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. His research interest is in the area of corporate finance and he is a recipient of teaching excellence award at Korea University (given to top 5% instructors based on student evaluations) for 7 consecutive years (every year during his tenure). 

Michael Sherris

CEPAR, University of New South Wales

Michael Sherris is Professor of Actuarial Studies in the Australian School of Business at the University of New South Wales. His research sits at the intersection of actuarial science and financial economics, and has attracted a number of international and Australian prizes.  He has published in leading international risk and actuarial studies journals including Journal of Risk and Insurance, Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control and Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance. Prior to becoming an academic he worked in the banking and finance industry for a number of major banks and a life insurance company. He has been an active member of the Australian actuarial profession having served on the Council of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia. He was President (2008-2009) of the Asia Pacific Risk and Insurance Association.

Mikhail Krayzler

Technische Universität München

Mikhail Krayzler is a researcher at the Department of Mathematics at the Technische Universität München. He is working in collaboration with risklab, a subsidiary of Allianz Global Investors. His research interests lie at the intersection of finance and insurance. In particular, he is currently working on pricing and risk management of equity-linked insurance and pension products. Mikhail was awarded the 1st Gauss-prize of the German Society of Actuaries for his recent work on Variable Annuities. Mikhail holds M.Sc. in “Finance and Information Management” from the TU München and B.Sc. in “Applied Mathematics and Informatics” from the Technical University of Nizhny Novgorod.

Rachel J. Huang

National Taiwan University of Science and Technology

Dr. Rachel J. Huang is an Associate Professor of Finance at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology in Taiwan. She obtained her PhD at the National Taiwan University in 2003 and has been on the faculty of National Taiwan University of Science and Technology since 2010.

Dr. Huang's research has focused on risk theory, asymmetric information, and behavioral insurance. Her research has appeared in Management Science, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Empirical Finance, Journal of Financial Services Research, The Journal of Risk and Insurance, Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Geneva Risk and Insurance Review. In 2012 and 2013, Dr. Huang was respectively awarded the 2012 Taiwan Risk and Insurance Association Early Career Award and the 2013 American Risk and Insurance Association Early Career Award. More recently, she was named Outstanding Research Award winner at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology. She currently serves as an Associate Editor for Geneva Risk and Insurance Review and a Board member of American Risk and Insurance Association.

Sabine Wende

University of Cologne

Sabine Wende is an Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Cologne. Her main research interests lie in the areas of insurance and risk management, with a focus on financial market structure, financial market regulation, capital structure, and financial intermediation.

Sabine Wende holds a doctorate degree in economics from the University of Cologne. Prior to her current position she was a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvenia and the University of Georgia. She is an associate editor of the  Journal of Insurance Issues and a member of the Risk Theory Society.

Shinichi Kamiya

Nanyang Technological University

Dr. Kamiya has significant research expertise in the areas of Insurance Economics and Risk Management. His areas of past research include, underwriting, adverse selection, moral hazard, and operational risk and reputational risk management. Dr. Kamiya earned a Master degree in Applied Mathematics in University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Ph.D. degree in Risk and Insurance from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His expertise in research is complemented with practical experience as an underwriter in Japanese P&C insurance market.

Stephen J. Mildenhall

Aon Analytics and Innovation Center

Stephen Mildenhall is Global CEO of Analytics at Aon plc, and is based in Singapore. He is responsible for the development and delivery of analytic services to colleagues and clients. He has an undergraduate degree in Mathematics from the University of Warwick, England, and a Masters and Doctorate in Mathematics from the University of Chicago. Stephen is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society, an Associate of the Society of Actuaries, a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries, and a Chartered Enterprise Risk Analyst. His research interests include risk theory, capital determination, allocation and optimization, and applications of statistics to reserving and ratemaking problems.

Xian Xu

Fudan University

Xian Xu is Director of the China Insurance and Social Security Research Center (CISSRC) at Fudan University. Currently, he is also assistant dean of the School of Economics, Fudan
University. He earned his PhD (2010) in economics from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany. Xian’s main research interests are insurance economics, disaster economics, and risk management. He has published over 40 papers in journals incl. Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance, Journal of Financial Studies, Journal of Accounting Studies and Journal of Insurance Studies. Xian serves as National Accounting Leaders Candidates, Ministry of Finance of the People’s Republic of China; Council Member of the Insurance Institute of China. He has undertaken several research projects sponsored by the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, China Insurance Regulatory Commission, Insurance Institute of China, Shanghai Government, Insurance Institute of Shanghai etc.