Board Members
| Chairman Andrew W. Lo Andrew W. Lo Andrew W. Lo is the Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, the director of MIT’s Laboratory for Financial Engineering, a principal investigator at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He received a B.A. in economics from Yale University and an A.M. and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. His most recent research focuses on systemic risk in the financial system; evolutionary approaches to investor behavior, bounded rationality, and financial regulation; and applying financial engineering to develop new funding models for biomedical innovation. Lo has published extensively in academic journals ( see http://alo.mit.edu ) and his most recent book is Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought. His awards include Batterymarch, Guggenheim, and Sloan Fellowships; the Paul A. Samuelson Award; the Harry M. Markowitz Prize; the Eugene Fama Prize; the IAFE-SunGard Financial Engineer of the Year; the Global Association of Risk Professionals Risk Manager of the Year; one of TIME’s “100 most influential people in the world”; and awards for teaching excellence from both Wharton and MIT. Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
Academic Advisor Sanjiv R. Das Sanjiv R. Das Sanjiv Das is the William and Janice Terry Professor of Finance at Santa Clara University's Leavey School of Business. He previously held faculty appointments as Associate Professor at Harvard Business School and UC Berkeley. He holds post-graduate degrees in Finance (M.Phil and Ph.D. from New York University), Computer Science (M.S. from UC Berkeley), an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, B.Com in Accounting and Economics (University of Bombay, Sydenham College), and is also a qualified Cost and Works Accountant. He is a senior editor of The Journal of Investment Management, co-editor of The Journal of Derivatives and The Journal of Financial Services Research, and Associate Editor of other academic journals. Prior to being an academic, he worked in the derivatives business in the Asia-Pacific region as a Vice-President at Citibank. His current research interests include: the modeling of default risk, machine learning, social networks, derivatives pricing models, portfolio theory, and venture capital. He has published over one hundred articles in academic journals, and has won numerous awards for research and teaching. His recent book "Derivatives: Principles and Practice" was published in May 2010. He currently also serves as a Senior Fellow at the FDIC Center for Financial Research. Santa Clara University |
Advisory Council
| Kenneth Blay Kenneth Blay Kenneth Blay is Head of Research for Global Thought Leadership at Invesco. In this role, he works closely with investment teams to lead the development of original research, the authorship of white papers and articles for publication in practitioner journals, and the creation of innovative investment content focused on strengthening Invesco’s profile as a global thought leader in asset allocation, risk management, systematic and factor investing, and portfolio implementation. Mr. Blay joined Invesco in 2018. Prior to joining the firm, he served as advisory research manager in the portfolio and risk research group at State Street Associates, where he led research efforts for advisory engagements with institutional clients and collaborated with academic partners to develop and implement new research on asset allocation, risk management, and investment strategy. Previously, he was director of research for 1st Global, where he established the firm’s investment management research group, led asset allocation policy, and managed the firm’s discretionary multi-asset portfolios. He has been in the financial industry since 1991. Mr. Blay has worked closely with Nobel Laureate Harry Markowitz on advancing various asset allocation research initiatives, including the optimization of the net present value of future cash flows, tax-cognizant portfolio analysis, and simulation-based multi-period portfolio selection. He has had his research published through various journal articles and books, including Risk-Return Analysis: The Theory and Practice of Rational Investing (Volume 1), which he coauthored with Markowitz. He also serves on the advisory board for the Journal of Investment Management conference series. Mr. Blay earned a BBA degree in finance from the University of Texas.
Invesco |
Ronald N. Kahn Ronald N. Kahn Ronald N. Kahn, PhD, Managing Director, is Global Head of Scientific Equity Research at BlackRock. He is responsible for upholding and enhancing BlackRock's scientific equity research standards and products.
Ron's service with the firm dates back to 1998, including his years with Barclays Global Investors (BGI), which merged with BlackRock in 2009. At BGI, his roles included Global Head of Equity Research, Global Head of Advanced Equity Strategies, and Head of Active Equities in the US. Prior to joining BGI, Ron worked as Director of Research at BARRA, where his research covered equity and fixed income markets. With Richard Grinold, Ron authored Active Portfolio Management: Quantitative Theory and Applications. The two of them are the 2013 winners of James R. Vertin award, presented periodically by the CFA Institute to recognize individuals who have produced a body of research notable for its relevance and enduring value to investment professionals. He is a 2007 winner of the Bernstein Fabozzi/Jacobs Levy award for best article in the Journal of Portfolio Management. He serves on the editorial advisory boards of the Financial Analysts Journal, the Journal of Portfolio Management and the Journal of Investment Consulting. The 2007 book How I Became a Quant includes his essay describing his transition from physics to finance. Ron teaches the equities half of the course, "International Equity and Currency Markets" in UC Berkeley's Master of Financial Engineering Program. Ron earned an AB degree in physics, summa cum laude, from Princeton University, and a PhD in physics from Harvard University. He was a post-doctoral fellow in physics at University of California, Berkeley. BlackRock |
Ananth Madhavan Ananth Madhavan Ananth Madhavan, PhD, is a Lecturer at the Haas School of Business of the University of California, Berkeley.
Ananth has extensive practical and academic experience, with a focus on market microstructure, trading, asset management, and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). He is the author of an Oxford University Press book on ETFs and Index Investing and has published over 60 articles in leading academic and practitioner journals. His practical experience includes a variety of senior research roles as a Managing Director at BlackRock (2009-2024), Barclays Global Investors (2003-2009), and Investment Technology Group (2000-2003) where he was a member of the firm’s management and executive committees. Prior to moving to industry, Ananth was the Charles B. Thorton Professor of Finance at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California and the W. P. Carey Term Assistant Professor of Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Ananth earned a BA degree from the University of Delhi, MA degree from Boston University, and a PhD in economics from Cornell University. BlackRock |
| Yu (Ben) Meng Yu (Ben) Meng Dr. Yu (Ben) Meng is the Executive Vice President and Chairman of Asia Pacific, Franklin Templeton.
Dr. Yu (Ben) Meng has two decades of experience working in the global finance industry across three continents. His career has been a systematic accumulation of product knowledge regarding all major asset classes through the various roles he has held on both the sell side and the buy side that culminated in his most recent roles as the DCIO at State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) and CIO at California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS), which are, respectively, the largest asset owners in the world and in the US. His holistic investment experience spans the gamut of investment dimensions. In geographic markets, he has worked in Asia, Europe and the US. In approach, he is a “Quantimental,” with both bottom-up and top-down experience that represents the perfect blend of quantitative and fundamental approaches. In investment horizon, he has a deep knowledge of fast money investment as well as experience with asset owners with decades-long time horizons. Finally, in managing pools of assets, he has been at the helm of two of the largest asset owners in the world and has applied his investment acumen and leadership skills to contribute to the success of these organizations. He is a leader with the highest level of integrity, with an approach of cohesive team building and the ability to positively influence an organization’s culture and financial performance. In additional to his professional pursuits, Dr. Meng finds the time to actively engage with the academic community. He believes that great investment ideas often originate from the academic community. He serves on the editorial board of Journal of Investment Management (JOIM) and frequently teaches at top business schools globally such as the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley, where he was the recipient of the 2014 Cheit Award of Excellence in Teaching. Dr. Meng holds a Master of Financial Engineering degree from the Haas School of Business at University of California at Berkeley and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of California at Davis. Franklin Templeton |
Deep Srivastav Deep Srivastav Deep Srivastav is SVP, Head of Client Strategies and Analytics for Franklin Templeton. The role involves developing and integrating client and market insights into FT’s client interactions across business lines globally. The global team’s responsibilities include client data architecture, data engineering, business intelligence, data sciences, digital analytics, client analytics, goals-based personalization and capital markets insights. Prior to FT, he has worked at Oracle Financial Services as Head of Operations, at GE Capital as a Black Belt with Technology, and at Tata Motors as an Engineer.
Deep is an Electronics Engineer and an MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad with a focus on Quantitative Research and Marketing. He got certified as Six Sigma Black Belt in GE. He is IBM certified in Python for Data Science and SQL. Franklin Templeton |
Advisory Board
| John Ameriks John Ameriks John Ameriks, Ph.D., is a principal and global head of Quantitative Equity Group in Vanguard's Investment Management Group. His team manages or co-manages Vanguard active equity, alternative, multi-asset-class, and factor-based investment mandates using quantitative methods. Mr. Ameriks' research has appeared in The Journal of Finance, The American Economic Review, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, The Review of Economics and Statistics, and the Journal of Financial Planning. His current research interests include quantitative equity investment strategies, behavioral economics, retirement finance, and solutions-oriented single-fund investments. Before joining Vanguard in 2003, Mr. Ameriks was a senior research fellow at the TIAA-CREF Institute. He earned an A.B. from Stanford University and an M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University. The Vanguard Group |
Jeremy Baskin Jeremy Baskin Jeremy is currently an Advisor to Random Forest a financial technology firm that applies advanced data science to investment management. Previously, he was Global CEO and Global CIO of Rosenberg Equities responsible for overseeing and implementing Rosenberg’s global strategy. He is also a member of the AXA Rosenberg Group Board and the AXA Investment Managers Management Board and Executive Committee. He joined the company in 2010. Prior to joining Rosenberg Equities, Jeremy was senior vice president and head of active equity management for The Northern Trust Company. During his 22-year tenure at Northern Trust, he was responsible for the global passive business, as well as building the research and investment infrastructure for risk-taking value-added quantitative equity strategies. Jeremy left Northern Trust for a brief period to help develop the Equity Derivatives Group at First Union Securities, rejoining Northern Trust in 2000 as director of structured equity, quantitative management. Jeremy obtained an MBA in finance and marketing from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and a BA degree from Wesleyan University. He is a CFA charterholder and a member of the Investment Analysts Society of San Francisco, Chicago Analyst Society, Chicago Quantitative Alliance and the CFA Institute. MSCI |
Gary Bergstrom Gary Bergstrom Gary L. Bergstrom, Ph.D.
Gary founded Acadian Asset Management in 1986, to offer advanced global investment strategies to institutional investors around the world. He has been investing globally for over 40 years and was one of the first institutional managers to advocate the benefits of disciplined global equity investment for U.S. based investors. He spent nine years at the Putnam Companies and later founded Acadian Financial Research (predecessor of Acadian Asset Management). That firm worked extensively with a number of major investment organizations, including the State Street Bank and Trust Company where it developed and helped manage the first international index matching strategies. When the formal relationship with State Street ended, Acadian Asset Management began managing institutional assets directly. Since then, the firm has grown to over $80 billion of assets under management and has continued to be a pioneer in developing a variety of active strategies for global investing. Gary has been a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Portfolio Management. His award-winning article, “A New Route to High Returns and Lower Risks,” published in the journal in 1975, was one of the first to advocate significant allocations of the assets of U.S. –based funds to global equities. His other publications include articles in the Financial Analysts Journal, Columbia Journal of World Business, Management Science, The Wall Street Journal, and The Sloan Management Review, as well as chapters in many books. Gary currently serves on the boards of several major non-profit institutions. He has a particular interest in development economics and emerging markets, gained in part from his extensive research experience in India. He earned a doctorate from MIT’s Sloan School of Management, where he also served on the faculty. Gary L. Bergstrom, Ph.D. – Consultant Over 40 years of continuous institutional investment experience Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology BFO Investments LLC |
| H. Gifford Fong H. Gifford Fong H. Gifford Fong is the President of Gifford Fong Associates, a firm with a focus on fixed income, derivative products, and asset allocation analysis. The company is engaged in independent valuation, model validation, and portfolio strategy analysis. Mr. Fong received a B.S., M.B.A., and a J.D. (law) from the University of California at Berkeley. In his role as the editor of the Journal Of Investment Management (JOIM), Mr. Fong contributes significantly to financial research and discourse. He co-founded and edits the China JOIM and initiated the JOIM Conference Series. His professional involvement has included roles with the MIT Sloan School of Management's Corporation Visiting Committee and North American Executive Board, as well as being an advisory board member for MIT Sloan's Finance Faculty. He is also the founding sponsor and a steering committee member for the Masters in Financial Engineering Program at UC Berkeley, and a member of the Haas Hall of Fame and the Academic Advisory Board of the Consortium for Systemic Risk Analytics. Mr. Fong has been active in both academia and industry. His advisory roles have spanned the MIT Golub Center for Finance and Policy, the UC Berkeley Foundation, and the University of California Regents Committee on Investments. He has held editorial positions at the Financial Analysts Journal and contributed to the Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance. Additionally, he has served as a vice-chair and member of the research committee for the CFA Institute's Research Foundation. As an author, Mr. Fong has co-authored "Fixed-Income Portfolio Management" (Dow Jones-Irwin) and "Advanced Fixed Income Portfolio Management: The State of the Art" (Probus Publishing). He has also edited "The Credit Market Handbook: Advanced Modeling Issues" (Wiley Finance), along with books on hedge funds and risk management by World Scientific. His numerous publications in professional journals indicate his engagement and commitment to the field. Mr. Fong has been recognized with awards such as the Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance Award and the Financial Analysts Journal Graham and Dodd Award of Excellence. He also dedicates time to serving on various non-profit and company boards. Gifford Fong Associates |
Thomas M. Idzorek Thomas M. Idzorek Thomas M. Idzorek, CFA, is chief investment officer, retirement, for Morningstar Investment Management LLC. He also serves as a member of Morningstar’s 401(k) committee, Public Policy Council, Global Investment Committee, U.S. Investment Policy Committee, and the editorial board of Morningstar magazine. He is a former member of the editorial board of the CFA Institute’s Financial Analysts Journal. Idzorek previously served as the president of Morningstar’s global investment management division, where he oversaw the firm’s global investment management entities, investment management consulting businesses, retirement solutions, Morningstar’s broker/dealer (Morningstar Investment Services, LLC), global index business, and financial wellness business. Additionally, he has served as president of Ibbotson Associates, president of Morningstar Associates, board member/responsible officer for a number of Morningstar Investment Management subsidiaries, global chief investment officer for Morningstar Investment Management, chief investment officer for Ibbotson Associates, and director of research and product development for Ibbotson. Before joining Ibbotson (acquired by Morningstar in 2006), he worked for Zephyr Associates. Idzorek has written numerous journal articles, and coauthored three CFA Institute Research Foundation books, and is a co-creator of the Popularity Asset Pricing Model (PAPM). He is an expert on multi-asset class strategic asset allocation, the Black–Litterman model, target date funds, retirement income solutions, fund-of-funds optimization, risk budgeting, and performance analysis. Idzorek is the key methodological creator of Morningstar’s target date and retirement managed account (robo-advice) solutions. He holds a bachelor’s degree in marketing from Arizona State University and a master’s degree in business administration from Thunderbird School of Global Management. Morningstar |
Will Kinlaw Will Kinlaw Will Kinlaw, CFA
Senior Managing Director and Head of State Street Associates Will is senior managing director and Head of Research at State Street Global Markets, the capital markets arm at State Street, where he is responsible for a global team of 60 data scientists, quantitative researchers and economists as well the firm’s partnerships with data science startups and academics at State Street Associates. The team delivers proprietary investment indicators, data-driven trade ideas, and award-winning research to more than 1,000 institutional investors around the world through its Insights research platform, mobile app, client conferences, and podcast. Will’s research has focused on economic forecasting, private equity, portfolio construction, currency hedging, inflation, and risk measurement. He has received six awards for peer-reviewed journal articles and the second edition of his book, “Asset Allocation: From Theory to Practice and Beyond,” co-authored with Mark Kritzman and David Turkington, was published in 2021. Will serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Portfolio Management and the Journal of Alternative Investments. He holds an M.S. in finance from Boston College, a B.A. in Economics from Tufts University, and a CFA designation. He joined State Street in 2002. State Street Global Exchange |
| Mark Kritzman Mark Kritzman Mark Kritzman is a Founding Partner and CEO of Windham Capital Management, LLC and the Chairman of Windham’s investment committee. He is responsible for managing research activities and investment advisory services. He is also a Founding Partner of State Street Associates, and he teaches a graduate finance course at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mark served as a Founding Director of the International Securities Exchange and as a Commissioner on the Group Insurance Commission of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He has also served on the Advisory Board of the Government Investment Corporation of Singapore (GIC) and the boards of the Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance, The Investment Fund for Foundations, and State Street Associates. He is currently a member of several advisory, corporate, and editorial boards, including, the Advisory Board of the MIT Sloan Finance Group, the Board of Governors of St. John’s University, Protego Trust Company, the Emerging Markets Review, the Journal of Alternative Investments, the Journal of Derivatives, the Journal of Investment Management, where he is Book Review Editor, and The Journal of Portfolio Management. He has written more than 100 articles for peer-reviewed journals and is the author or co-author of eight books including Asset Allocation: From Theory to Practice and Beyond, Puzzles of Finance, and The Portable Financial Analyst. Mark won Graham and Dodd scrolls in 1993 and 2002, the Research Prize from the Institute for Quantitative Investment Research in 1997, the Bernstein Fabozzi/Jacobs Levy Award nine times, the Roger F. Murray Prize from the Q-Group in 2012, and the Peter L. Bernstein Award in 2013 for Best Paper in an Institutional Investor Journal. In 2004, Mark was elected a Batten Fellow at the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Virginia. Mark has a BS in economics from St. John’s University, an MBA with distinction from New York University, and a CFA designation. Windham Capital Management, LLC |
Martin L. Leibowitz Martin L. Leibowitz Martin L. Leibowitz is President of Advanced Portfolio Studies LLC (APS), and a Senior Advisor for Morgan Stanley. Prior to founding APS in 2019, he served as Vice Chairman in Morgan’s Research Department. Before joining Morgan, Dr. Leibowitz was vice chairman and chief investment officer of TIAA from 1995 to 2004.
Dr. Leibowitz has a Ph.D. in mathematics from New York University. He has written over 250 articles and has been the most frequently-published author in both the Financial Analysts Journal (FAJ) and the Journal of Portfolio Management (JPM). Ten of his FAJ articles have received Graham and Dodd Awards. Leibowitz has written several books with various coauthors. In 1972, his first book, Inside the Yield Book, became an early standard in the field of fixed income with more than 20 re-printings. In January 2015, Leibowitz was named “Financial Engineer of the Year” by the IAQF, joining awardees such as Fischer Black, Myron Scholes, Robert Merton, Jim Simons, and Cliff Asness. Leibowitz has received all three of the CFA Institute’s highest awards. Dr. Leibowitz serves on the Board of The Rockefeller Foundation and on the investment committees of Singapore’s GIC, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Carnegie Corporation, the IMF pension system, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Advanced Portfolio Studies LLC (APS) |
Richard O. Michaud Richard O. Michaud Richard O. Michaud is President and Chief Investment Officer of New Frontier Advisors LLC. Dr. Michaud's research and consulting has focused on portfolio optimization, asset allocation, investment strategies, global equity management, stock valuation technology, statistical methods in finance, financial planning theory, behavioral finance, portfolio analysis and trading costs. He has a Ph.D. in mathematics from Boston University and has taught investment management at Columbia University.
Dr. Michaud is co-inventor (with Robert O. Michaud) (U.S. patent, December 1999, October 2005 and Israeli patent, November 2005) of an optimization and portfolio rebalancing method for improving the investment value of equity portfolios and asset allocations in practice. Worldwide patents pending. New Frontier Advisors has exclusive worldwide rights. Prior professional positions include: Director, Research and Development, Acadian Asset Management; Director, Research and New Product Development, State Street Bank and Trust Co.; Head, Equity Analytics, Merrill Lynch; Director, Quantitative Investment Services, Prudential Securities. He is a Graham and Dodd Scroll winner for his work on optimization, a former Director of the "Q" Group and an Editorial Board member of the Financial Analysts Journal and Journal of Investment Management (JOIM). He has published a number of papers in academic and professional journals and two books: Efficient Asset Management: A Practical Guide to Stock Portfolio Optimization and Asset Allocation, Oxford University Press 1998; Investment Styles, Market Anomalies, and Global Stock Selection, Association for Investment Management Research (AIMR) 1999. New Frontier Advisor, LLC |
| Eva Xu Eva Xu Eva was formerly the Senior Portfolio Manager of Schwab Intelligent Portfolios (SIP), Schwab’s Robo Advisor product with USD$53.4 billion assets under management as of 2020. She serves as the Chair of the SAMS Model Committee and a member of the SAMS Asset Allocation Committee. She and her team were responsible for Strategic Asset Allocation models, providing thought leadership across Schwab and beyond. She is a winner of Schwab 2014 CEO Award and a two-time winner of the Chairman's Club.
Prior to joining Schwab in 2012, Eva spent eight years at Mellon Capital Management in San Francisco ending her tenure there as a Director in Investment Research; she subsequently co-founded Bayswater Asset Management, a systematic global macro hedge fund, serving as its Managing Partner for seven years. Before Eva started her practitioner’s career, she was an assistant professor of Economics at the University of Maryland, and earlier in her career, she served as an Economic Consultant at the World Bank. Eva holds a PhD in Economics from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver and a BS in Physics from Tsinghua University in Beijing. |
Program Committee
| Vineer Bhansali Vineer Bhansali Vineer Bhansali is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of LongTail Alpha. His 30-year investment career started at Citibank, where he founded and managed the Exotic and Hybrid Options Trading Desk. He later joined Salomon Brothers in its Fixed Income Arbitrage Group, followed by the CSFB Proprietary Trading Group. Dr. Bhansali was at PIMCO for 16 years, serving the last eight years as MD and Head of the Quantitative Portfolios Team, which he founded in 2008. Dr. Bhansali also managed all of PIMCO’s analytics from 2000 to 2010. Among other responsibilities, he was the lead PM for the PIMCO TRENDS Managed Futures Strategy Fund, the PIMCO Tail Risk Hedging Funds, PIMCO RealRetirement and RealPath Funds, and PIMCO’s indexed ETFS. He was also co-PM of the PIMCO Global Multi-Asset Fund, PIMCO Global Relative Value Fund and PIMCO Distressed Senior Credit Opportunities Fund. He has written five books on finance: “Pricing and Managing Exotic and Hybrid Options”; “Fixed Income Finance: A Quantitative Approach”; “Bond Portfolio Investing and Risk Management”, “Tail Risk Hedging”, and his most recent: “The Incredible Upside-Down Fixed-Income Market: Negative Interest Rates and Their Implications” and authored over 30 refereed papers on topics as varied as option pricing, fixed income, tail hedging, asset allocation and economics in leading Journals that include the Journal of Finance, Financial Analysts’ Journal, Journal of Portfolio Management, and Journal of Risk. He has received numerous awards, including the Graham and Dodd Scroll Award and TIME magazine’s college achievement award. Under Bhansali’s leadership, PIMCO received the Risk Manager of the Year Award in the asset-management category in 2002 from Risk Magazine. In its announcement of the award, PIMCO cited “a proprietary system developed in-house by PIMCO’s Vineer Bhansali, Ph.D. and his team.” Dr. Bhansali received his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Harvard University in 1992 and M.S. and B.S. degrees in Physics from Caltech in 1987. Vineer is an ultra-marathon runner and has finished the Western States Endurance Run numerous times, including earning the silver buckle in 2014, and also the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc, Angeles Crest 100 and Leadville 100. He has over 4000 hours of flight time in all types of aircraft, including jets and helicopters, and holds the Airline Transport Pilot Rating. He has served on the Investment Committee of the American Physical Society, and currently serves on the Investment Committee of the Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies and on the Boards of the Q Group and the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. LongTail Alpha, LLC |
Jeffrey Bohn Jeffrey Bohn Dr. Bohn is Chief Strategy Officer for One Concern, a California-based InsurTech focused on resilience modeling. He is also a board member and researcher at the Consortium for Data Analytics in Risk (CDAR) at U.C. Berkeley. Most recently, he was the Chief Research & Innovation Officer at the Swiss Re Institute in Zürich. In the past, he served as Chief Science Officer at State Street Global Exchange in San Francisco. Before moving back to California, he established the Portfolio Analytics and Valuation Department within State Street Global Markets Japan in Tokyo. Dr. Bohn often conducts seminars on topics ranging from risk & portfolio management to machine learning. He has published widely in the area of credit risk. He co-authored with Roger Stein Active Credit Portfolio Management in Practice (Wiley, 2009). His recent research focuses on ESG investing, socially responsible machine intelligence, causal inference to improve machine-learning interpretability, and machine-intelligence-enabled tools to assess company & urban resilience.
One Concern |
Sharon Hill Sharon Hill Sharon Hill, Ph.D. is a senior portfolio manager and Head of Alpha Equity – Global & Income within Vanguard’s Quantitative Equity Group. Her team manages active equity global and income-oriented mandates using quantitative methods. Prior to joining Vanguard in 2019, she was Head of Equity Quantitative Research & Analytics at Macquarie Investment Management. Earlier roles include working as a fixed income software developer at Bloomberg L.P. and teaching mathematics at Rowan University. She earned a B.S. in Mathematics from City University of New York at Brooklyn College and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Mathematics from University of Connecticut. Vanguard |
| Alok Mahajan Alok Mahajan Alok Mahajan is a Principal with KPMG and serves as Silicon Valley Leader for Valuation Services practice. He has over 17 years of experience as a valuation professional and is considered one of the national leaders for valuations in the Technology and Venture Capital backed companies sectors. Currently he is also leading KPMG’s National Complex Security (Derivatives and Fin Instruments) Valuations Practice. His clients include some of the best known and most innovative technology companies and many VC backed private companies. He currently serves as observer (and is past Chair of) KPMG’s Valuation Services Technical Committee (VSTC). He served on the Appraisal Practices Board (APB) of The Appraisal Foundation (TAF) from 2010-2015. He is a frequent speaker on valuation topics. Alok is a CFA charter holder, received his MBA from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and a B. tech from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India. KPMG |
Roger M. Stein Roger M. Stein Roger M. Stein has been actively engaged in developing, implementing and writing about new approaches to applied risk modeling and financial prediction for almost 25 years. He and his teams have developed, implemented and delivered products and services that have become industry benchmarks in banking and finance.
He is currently Senior Lecturer in finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management and also holds the position of Research Affiliate at the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering. He is also an Affiliated Researcher at the Center for Risk Management Research, University of California, Berkeley. His current research interests are in the areas of systemic risk, credit risk, model risk and validation, biomedical funding, and the interface between data mining and financial theory. In addition to his academic work, he has held a number of senior positions in industry. He was the Chief Analytics Officer at State Street GX, as well as Senior Managing Director of Product Strategy. Before this he was Managing Director of Research and Academic Relations globally for Moody’s Corporation and prior to this he was President of Moody’s Research Labs (MRL), a wholly owned subsidiary of Moody’s Corporation, where he led a team of researchers and engineers charged with incubating a number of innovative quantitative technologies for assessing credit and other forms of financial risk. The firm’s research spanned diverse domains including mortgage-, municipal- and retail-credit risk, microfinance, and systemic risk. Upon reaching maturity, the products and methodologies incubated by MRL were transitioned to other operating units of Moody’s Corporation for ongoing production. Stein also headed the Managed Funds group at Moody’s Investors Service for several years during which time he introduced new quantitative approaches to various aspects of the ratings process. Earlier in his career, Dr. Stein was co-head of research at Moody’s KMV. There he led the commercial development of risk management tools (including RiskCalc™ and LossCalc™) that are in use at hundreds of financial institutions worldwide, as well as creating customized analytic services for clients. Before his work at MKMV, Stein was the Head of Research at Moody’s Risk Management Services (MRMS) where he oversaw a team of researchers focused on building products to assess various forms of corporate credit risk. At MRMS Stein and his colleagues also developed a number of methodologies for validating and testing risk model performance that have become standard approaches in industry and academia. In addition to his professional work he is the founder and president of the Consortium for Systemic Risk Analytics and a member of the Advisory Council of the Museum of Mathematics; the Board of PlaNet Finance, USA, and the Academic Advisory Board of the EC’s SYstemic Risk Tomography Project (SYRTO). Dr. Stein holds a Ph.D. and Masters degree from the Stern School of Business, New York University, and a Bachelors degree in Mathematics and Japanese Studies from the State University of New York at Binghamton, with undergraduate minors in Russian and East Asian Studies. He has been practicing Aikido since 1980. NYU Stern |
Paul Zhang Paul Zhang Dr. Pu (Paul) Zhang is an Investment Manager at the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), the largest U.S. pension funds. At CalPERS, Paul is responsible for performing investment analysis and management and making total fund level asset allocation recommendations to the CalPERS Board. He is also a voting member of the Real Assets Investment Committee. Prior to CalPERS, he worked in the hedge fund industry and specialized in building high frequency trading strategies covering equities, fixed income, currencies and commodities. Paul holds a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from University of Exeter, UK, M.Sc. in Planetary Physics from Purple Mountain Observatory, China, and B.Sc. in Space Physics from University of Science and Technology of China. Paul is a CFA® charterholder. CalPERS |