GRI Research Advisory Committee

The Research Advisory Committee’s (RAC) mandate is to advise the GRI team. This includes advice on proposed and current funded research, research output, and global financial risk research directions.

GRI’s RAC members include internationally renowned financial risk researchers and senior industry leaders with a keen interest in financial risk research.

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Claude Bergeron

EVP & Chief Risk Officer, La Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec (Retired)

Claude Bergeron was appointed Executive Vice-President and Chief Risk Officer on November 1, 2010. In this capacity, Mr. Bergeron oversees the teams responsible for monitoring, measuring and analyzing risk at the Caisse. Mr. Bergeron has more than 20 years of experience with the Caisse where he has played a lead role in a number of major domestic and international files and investments. Over the course of his career, he has acquired a solid knowledge of both the public and the private sectors.

He joined the Caisse in 1988 as Senior Legal Adviser. He was subsequently assigned various functions and mandates for the Caisse’s investment sectors, subsidiaries and general services. He was promoted to Vice-President in 1993, Senior Vice-President, Legal Affairs, and Assistant Secretary in 2005, and Executive Vice-President, Legal Affairs and Secretariat, in June 2009. Between 2007 and 2009, Mr. Bergeron was instrumental in developing the plan to restructure third-party asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP). He became Acting Chief Risk Officer in August 2009. Under his leadership, the Caisse completed the implementation of an accelerated program to strengthen its risk management practices.

Mr. Bergeron is a member of the Québec Bar and the Canadian Bar Association. He holds a law degree from the Université de Montréal and a degree in business administration from HEC Montréal. He also studied accounting at the Université du Québec à Montréal. In 2009, he completed an international MBA program, specializing in financial services and insurance, co-administered by the Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, in Belgium, and the University of St. Gallen, in Switzerland. In the spring of 2009, Mr. Bergeron was presented the Canadian General Counsel of the Year Award. In 2007, he received the Commerce-ZSA Québec Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a former member of several corporate Boards of Directors, such as those of Noverco and Quebecor Media.

He joined the Caisse in 1988 as Senior Legal Adviser. He was subsequently assigned various functions and mandates for the Caisse’s investment sectors, subsidiaries and general services. He was promoted to Vice-President in 1993, Senior Vice-President, Legal Affairs, and Assistant Secretary in 2005, and Executive Vice-President, Legal Affairs and Secretariat, in June 2009. Between 2007 and 2009, Mr. Bergeron was instrumental in developing the plan to restructure third-party asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP). He became Acting Chief Risk Officer in August 2009. Under his leadership, the Caisse completed the implementation of an accelerated program to strengthen its risk management practices.

Mr. Bergeron is a member of the Québec Bar and the Canadian Bar Association. He holds a law degree from the Université de Montréal and a degree in business administration from HEC Montréal. He also studied accounting at the Université du Québec à Montréal. In 2009, he completed an international MBA program, specializing in financial services and insurance, co-administered by the Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, in Belgium, and the University of St. Gallen, in Switzerland. In the spring of 2009, Mr. Bergeron was presented the Canadian General Counsel of the Year Award. In 2007, he received the Commerce-ZSA Québec Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a former member of several corporate Boards of Directors, such as those of Noverco and Quebecor Media.

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Agostino Capponi

Associate Professor Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, Director of the Center for Digital Finance and Technologies, Columbia University

Agostino Capponi is an Associate Professor in the IEOR Department at Columbia University, and the founding director of the Columbia Center for Digital Finance and Technologies. His research interests are in financial technology, artificial intelligence and machine learning in finance, market microstructure, and financial networks. Agostino’s research has been funded by major government agencies and private corporations, including NSF, DARPA, DOE, IBM, GRI, Ripple, and Ethereum. His research has been recognized with the 2018 NSF CAREER award, and with the inaugural JP Morgan AI Research Faculty award. His research findings have been covered by major media outlets, including Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters, Politico, and the Financial Times. Agostino is a fellow of the crypto and blockchain economics research forum, an academic fellow of Alibaba’s Luohan academy, and an external fellow of the FinTech Initiative at Cornell. 

Agostino is the former Chair of the SIAG/FME Activity Group and of the INFORMS Finance Section. Agostino serves as an editor of Management Science in the Finance Department, co-editor of Mathematics and Financial Economics, and area editor of Operations Research Letters. He also serves as an associate editor of major journals in his field, such as Operations Research, Finance and Stochastics, SIAM Journal on Financial Mathematics, and Stochastic Systems. Agostino is a co-editor of the book “Machine Learning and Data Sciences for Financial Markets: A Guide to Contemporary Practices”, recently published by the Cambridge University Press.

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Bruce Choy

Executive Vice President, Risk & Audit, Infrastructure Ontario and Adjunct Professor, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto

Dr Bruce Choy is an Adjunct Professor at Rotman School of Management in the specialized field of risk management, and an Executive Vice President with Infrastructure Ontario.

He was formerly the Managing Director of research for the Global Risk Institute. Prior to this Dr Choy held corporate roles as a General Manager with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, leading their market risk and balance sheet management functions, and was a Partner and Risk Consulting practice leader with PwC. He still advises on bank risk management and chairs the Board Risk Committee for Shinhan Bank Canada. These corporate roles follow from an earlier tenure-track academic career that specialized in environmental risk management. 

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Michel Crouhy

Head of Research & Development, NATIXIS in France

Dr. Michel Crouhy is Head of Research and Development at Natixis Corporate and Investment Bank, a subsidiary of Groupe BPCE. He has the bankwide oversight on all quantitative research and the development of new products and applications supporting the trading and structuring businesses. He is also the founder and president of the Natixis  Foundation for Quantitative Research, which promotes and supports academic research and world-class events in the area of mathematical finance.

Formerly, Dr. Crouhy was senior vice president, business analytic solutions, in the Risk Management Division, at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. He was responsible for the development of risk measurement methodologies and models for market, credit (corporate and retail), operational risk and economic capital attribution, as well as customer behavior analytics. His responsibilities also included the approval of all pricing, balance-sheet, risk and capital-related models. He was also in charge of the RAROC (economic capital attribution) and operational risk groups.

Prior to his career in the industry, Dr. Crouhy was a professor of finance at the HEC School of Management in Paris, where he was also the founder and director of the M.S. HEC in international finance, the first MS program in financial engineering. He has been a visiting professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Crouhy is a founding member of PRMIA (the Professional Risk Managers’ International Association) and a member of the PRMIA Blue Ribbon Panel, and a member of the Credit Risk Committee of the International Association of Financial Engineers (IAFE). He is the author and co-author of several books, the most recent ones being Risk Management (McGraw-Hill – 2001), The Essentials of Risk Management (second edition, McGraw-Hill – 2014); and he has published extensively in academic journals in the areas of banking, options, risk management and financial markets. He is also associate editor of several academic journals. Dr. Crouhy holds a PhD from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and has a Doctoris Honoris Causa from the University of Montreal.

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Blair Feltmate

Head, Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, University of Waterloo

Blair Feltmate is Head, Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, University of Waterloo, where he is also Associate Professor. The Intact Centre is an incubator for research and knowledge mobilization, with an aim to limit the negative impacts associated with climate change and extreme weather events in Canada. The Intact Centre was made possible through the generosity of Intact Financial Corporation.

Previous positions Blair has held include Vice President, Sustainable Development, Bank of Montreal; Director, Sustainable Development, OPG; Partner, Sustainable Investment Group/YMG Capital Management; and President, Sustainable Systems Associates. His early career began by developing the sustainable development programs for such companies as Noranda, Falconbridge, Placer Dome, Barrick Gold, Consumers Gas and the American Chemistry Council (Washington). Blair has written textbooks on Sustainable Banking (University of Toronto Press), and Aquatic Ecology (CAB International).

He is generally interviewed by TV/radio/newspapers 100-150 times per year, primarily on the subject of how to address climate change. He speaks regularly to governments (nationally / internationally) and industry sectors on the need and means to adjust to a changing climate. He is Chair, Federal Government of Canada Expert Panel on Climate Adaptation and Resilience Results. He is also Chair, Electricity Transmission and Distribution Adaptation Standard, Canadian Standards Association; he serves on other flood mitigation Standards committees for CSA. He is former Chair of Pollution Probe, and he was Chair/Founder of the Sustainable Electricity Program, Canadian Electricity Association. Blair was an NSERC Post-Doctoral Fellow (University of Waterloo); he holds a Ph.D, Theoretical and Applied Ecology (University of Toronto); M.Sc., Zoology (U of T); M.A., Sustainable Development (Wilfrid Laurier University); Hon. B.Sc., Geography.

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Michael A. Goldberg

Dean Emeritus & Professor, Sauder School of Business, UBC

Dr. Goldberg is Dean Emeritus and Professor at the Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia (UBC). His global academic career has spanned over four decades of research and public service, with leadership roles in world class academic institutions in North America and Asia. 

In Canada, this included being Associate Vice President (International) for UBC, HR Fullerton Professor of Urban Land Policy and Dean of UBC Sauder School of Business. Author of nine books and over 200 academic/professional publications, his research specialization is on the economics of land use, real estate and infrastructure. Dr. Goldberg is a former Board Director for CPPIB along with numerous other institutional asset management firms in North America, Asia and Europe. Dr. Goldberg has a MA and PhD in Economics from UC Berkley and a BA in Economics from Brooklyn College.

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John Hull

Professor of Derivatives & Risk Management, Rotman School of Management

John Hull is the Maple Financial Professor of Derivatives and Risk Management at the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. He is an internationally recognized authority on derivatives and risk management and has many publications in this area.

Dr. Hull is a respected researcher in the academic field of quantitative finance. He was, with Alan White, one of the winners of the Nikko-LOR research competition for his work on the Hull-White interest rate model, which is widely used by practitioners. In 1999 he was voted Financial Engineer of the Year by the International Association of Financial Engineers. He has acted as consultant to many North American, Japanese, and European financial institutions.

He has won many teaching awards, including University of Toronto’s prestigious Northrop Frye award, He has written three books: “Risk Management and Financial Institutions” (now in its 4th edition), “Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives” (now in its 9th edition) and “Fundamentals of Futures and Options Markets” (now in its 9th edition). The books have been translated into many languages and are widely used in trading rooms throughout the world, as well as in the classroom. Dr. Hull is co-director of Rotman’s Master of Finance program and Rotman’s new Master of Financial Risk Management program. In addition to the University of Toronto, Dr. Hull has taught at York University, University of British Columbia, New York University, Cranfield University, and London Business School.

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James (Jim) C. MacGee

Managing Director, Economic & Financial Research, Bank of Canada

James (Jim) C. MacGee was appointed Managing Director of Economic and Financial Research (EFR), effective January 2, 2019. In this role, Mr. MacGee works with the managing directors, research directors and relevant teams within the Bank to develop and execute leading-edge research to support the Bank’s policy functions.

Previously, Mr. MacGee was Associate Professor of Economics at Western University, where his research interests included consumer credit and macroprudential policy, monetary economics, the adoption of technology, and international trade. He was the recipient of the 2013 Bank of Canada Governor’s Award for his research on consumer bankruptcy. He was a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland in 2008–09.

James (Jim) C. MacGee was appointed Managing Director of Economic and Financial Research (EFR), effective January 2, 2019. In this role, Mr. MacGee works with the managing directors, research directors and relevant teams within the Bank to develop and execute leading-edge research to support the Bank’s policy functions.

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Daniel Moore

Board Director, Deutsche Bank USA, and CEO, RiverRun Ventures

Dr Moore is an independent Director and Chair of the Risk Committees of the Board for Deutsche Bank (USA) Corporation and Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas, and CEO, RiverRun Ventures.

He is also the former Group Head and Chief Risk Officer for Scotiabank where he was responsible for the global management of risk, including enterprise, credit and market risks. He has extensive global experience, with stints working for the bank in Asia, Europe and North America in addition to in depth knowledge of Scotiabank’s South American markets.

Dr Moore has been awarded a doctorate from Oxford University in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics, and a Bachelors of Science in Theoretical Physics from Queens University.

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Gopala (Gops) Narayanan

SVP, Enterprise Risk Management, RBC

Mr. Narayanan is the Senior Vice President of Enterprise Risk Management at RBC and is accountable for strategic risk appetite, financial resiliency, measurement of credit risk and climate/emerging risk exposures. He brings extensive global financial services experience from stints working across North America and Asia.

Mr. Narayanan has a MBA from the Indian Institute of Management and a BE in chemical engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology & Science.

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Dan Rosen

Professor of Mathematical Finance, The Fields Institute, University of Toronto

Dan Rosen is currently a Visiting Researcher and the first Director of the Centre for Financial Industries at the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences, as well as an Adjunct Professor of Mathematical Finance at the University of Toronto. Dr. Rosen was the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of R2 Financial Technologies.

A successful Risk and Portfolio Management Technology firm serving multi-asset hedge funds, asset managers, banks and regulators across the world, R2 was originally incubated at the Fields Institute, and then acquired by S&P Capital IQ in 2012, where Dr. Rosen served as the Managing Director for Risk and Analytics until 2015.

In addition to working with numerous financial institutions around the world, he lectures extensively on financial engineering, portfolio management, enterprise risk and capital management, credit risk and market risk, valuation of derivatives and structured finance. He has authored numerous risk management and financial engineering publications, including two books, and several patents, and serves in the editorial board of several industrial and academic journals, including Quantitative FinanceJournal of Risk Management in Financial InstitutionsJournal of Credit Risk, and Esotocastica. Dr. Rosen was inducted in 2010 a Fellow of the Fields Institute for his “outstanding contributions to the Fields Institute, its programs, and to the Canadian mathematical community”.

He currently serves in the Board of Directors of the Fields Institute, as well as in the Advisory Boards of Canada’s Institute Innovation Platform (IIP), the International Association of Quantitative Finance (IAQF), and the Center for Advanced Financial Studies at the University of Waterloo. He is one of the founders of the Professional Risk Management International Association (PRMIA), where he served as regional director in Toronto, and of RiskLab, an international network of research centers in Financial Engineering and Risk Management, initiated at the University of Toronto. He was also a member of the Fitch Academic Advisory Board and the Oliver Wyman Institute. Prior to starting R2 in 2006, Dr. Rosen had a successful career over a decade at Algorithmics Inc., where he started in 1995 as a Financial Engineer, and lead the company’s financial engineering and research, strategy, products and marketing. As part of the senior management team, he was responsible for developing the strategic direction, as well as new products, business initiatives and alliances. He also led the research, design, positioning and application to industrial settings of analytical tools including: credit, market and operational risk; counterparty risk, economic and regulatory capital management; new insurance and asset management solutions; advanced simulation and portfolio optimization.

He holds an M.A.Sc. and PhD. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Toronto, and was a Post-Doctoral fellow and Research Associate at the Centre for Management of Technology and Entrepreneurship (CMTE). His B.A.Sc. is in Chemical Engineering from the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, in Mexico City, where he was also later awarded in 2015 the recognition of Distinguished Alumni.