CDAR Directory

Samim Ghamami

Affiliated Researcher

Samim Ghamami is currently an economist at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Division of Economic and Risk Analysis (DERA), a senior researcher and an adjunct professor of finance at New York University, a senior researcher at UC Berkeley Center for Risk Management Research, and a senior advisor at SOFR Academy. Ghamami also serves on the advisory board of the Mathematics in Finance Program at the NYU Courant Institute.

Ghamami has been a senior economist, a senior strategist, and a senior vice president at Goldman Sachs. He has also been an...

Xiaowu Dai

Affiliated Researcher

Xiaowu Dai obtained his Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2019 and a Master’s in Computer Science and a Master’s in Mathematics from UW-Madison. He graduated with distinction from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2014.

His research interests include kernel machines, statistical learning theory, stochastic optimization, and applications to problems in biomedical neuroimaging and matching markets.

He received the Hannan Award from the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, Student Paper Award from the American Statistical Association Nonparametric...

Hubeyb Gurdogan

Postdoc

Hubeyb Gurdogan holds Master's degrees in pure mathematics from Bilkent University and Syracuse University. He obtained his PhD in Mathematics in 2021 from Florida State University under the supervision of Prof. Alec Kercheval. Hubeyb joined Consortium for Data Analytics in Risk (CDAR) in December 2021. His primary research interests include stochastic analysis, high dimensional statistics, and neural networks with an emphasis on mathematical finance.

Saad Mouti

Postdoc

Saad Mouti completed his Ph.D. in Financial and Actuarial Mathematics at Pierre and Marie Curie University (Paris 6, France) in 2017. Prior to that, he obtained a financial engineering diploma from the National School of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science of Grenoble in 2010 and an M.Sc. in Statistical Processing of Information from Paris-Dauphine University in 2011. Saad’s thesis was financed by AXA to address different financial risks for the life insurance industry and englobed the pricing and hedging of life insurance products and...

Lisa Goldberg

Co-Director

CDAR co-Director Lisa Goldberg is Professor of the Practice of Economics at University of California, Berkeley and Head of Research at Aperio Group, now part of BlackRock. Dr. Goldberg is a mathematician whose research integrates best practices from industry and academia. Her work has touched areas as diverse as topology, dynamical systems, quantitative finance, sports statistics and causal inference. She has published more than 50 articles and is co-author of a book, Portfolio Risk Management, which was published by Princeton University Press in 2010. Dr. Goldberg is inventor on five...

Julia Belford

Affiliated Researcher

Julia is a financial services professional and a visiting scholar with Berkeley Center for Risk Management Research. In her investment career she was responsible for systematic equities research and portfolio management for State Street Global Advisors, Wedbush Equity Management, Infinium Capital, BlackRock and Citadel. For several years Julia was also teaching market microstructure and high-frequency finance at Berkeley HAAS School of Business. Her current research interests are in using NLP and machine learning techniques in financial data analysis, with...

Dangxing Chen

Affiliated Researcher

Dangxing Chen is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Consortium for Data Analytics in Risk at
the University of California, Berkeley. There, his research concentrates on the study of the
mathematical model and the development of efficient numerical methods in finance. His ongoing
focus is on the understanding of the asset return distribution from the continuous-time
stochastic volatility model perspective and the efficient numerical methods to the stochastic
differential equations.


Dangxing obtained his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of North Carolina...

Alec Kercheval

Affiliated Researcher

Affiliated Researcher

Qizhi Tao

Member (2017-2021)

Qizhi TAO is a Professor and the Director of the BSc in Finance Program, School of Finance, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics. His research focus is on Corporate Finance (M&A, dividends policy and capital structures). He has published several research papers in journals including International Review of Economics and Finance, and North American Journal of Economics and Finance. He has also published two books: Mergers and Acquisitions by Peking University Press and A Guidebook on How to Conduct Financial Research by Tsinghua University Press. He is a consultant for...

Qing Li

Board Member (2017-2021)

Qing Li is Associate Dean of the Information School at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics (SWUFE). He is a professor at SWUFE and an adjunct professor at the University of Arizona. Prior to that, he worked at the Eller Business School at the University of Arizona, the Computer Department of Arizona State University, and the Information School at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). Li’s research interests lie primarily in financial intelligence: advanced intelligent information processing techniques to solve the challenges in finance. He has...