Building a collaborative community to support risk management and insurance research

Eun Jeong Cha is an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include life-cycle analysis of buildings and other infrastructure exposed to extreme events including earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, and terrorist attacks, design optimization against multiple hazards, the role of risk acceptance attitudes in civil engineering decisions, and extended life spans of civil infrastructure projects in planning, design, maintenance and replacement for a sustainable development. Her primary research areas include structural reliability, human decision-making, uncertainty quantification and optimization.

Tatyana Deryugina is an Associate Professor of Finance in the Gies College of Business. Her current research agenda includes estimating the short- and long-run health effects of natural disasters; understanding individuals’ and families’ location choices; improving measures of natural disaster damage; estimating the consequences of forgone health care; and understanding the role that the news media plays in post-disaster charitable giving.

Bo Li is the Department Chair of Statistics and a Professor of Computer Science in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Her research focuses on machine learning, security, privacy, and game theory. Specifically, much of our work aims at exploring vulnerabilities of machine learning systems to various adversarial attacks, and endeavors to develop real-world robust learning systems.

Ryan Sriver is an associate professor of atmospheric sciences with the University of Illinois Department of Atmospheric Sciences. His research seeks to develop a deeper understanding about the physical processes influencing variability within Earth's climate system and to quantify relevant uncertainties surrounding future climate projections. His work combines observational products, statistical methods and tools, and numerical models spanning a wide range of complexities and scales to understand how extreme weather and climate events are changing with global warming, what are the physical drivers, and what are the implications for natural and human systems.  

Ann Sychterz is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is also a Faculty Affiliate with the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology as well as a Faculty Fellow at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Her research work focuses primarily on designing, building, testing, and simulating of structures that are adaptive, lightweight, large-scale, resilient, and sustainable.

David Molitor is an Assistant Professor of Finance at the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). His research explores how location and the environment shape health and health care delivery in the United States. He is a Principal Investigator of the Illinois Workplace Wellness Study, a large-scale field experiment of workplace wellness conducted at the University of Illinois.

Runhuan Feng is a Professor of Mathematics, Statistics, Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering. He is currently the Chair of Education and Research Section Council of the Society of Actuaries. He is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries and a Chartered Enterprise Risk Analyst. He serves as an independent consultant to many external organizations and provides expert testimonies to law firms for public policy assessment and actuarial analysis. His consulting work has been used by Illinois General Assembly for pension-related legislative proposals.

Megan Konar conducts policy-relevant research that focuses on the intersection of water, food, and trade. Her research is inherently interdisciplinary, drawing from hydrology, environmental science, and economics. To conduct this research, she applies a range of quantitative tools, such as modeling, network analysis, and econometrics. Dr. Konar's research group is motivated by the overarching scientific question: "What is the relationship between water resources and food supply chains?'' She is interested in understanding how food supply chains impact water use and sustainability, as well as the exposure of agri-food supply chains to water risk, including long-term water stress and shorter-term water hazards. To tackle our overarching research question, we have been working to uncover how water impacts agri-food supply chains, how supply chains impact water use, and their interactions.

Cristian Proistosescu is an assistant professor with the University of Illinois Department of Atmospheric Sciences. He earned his Ph.D. in Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, 2017 and a B.A. in Physics, Princeton University, 2009. Research areas of interest include coupled climate dynamics, quantifying the impacts and societal cost of climate change, numerical, analytical, and statistical climate models, climate sensitivity, clouds and radiative feedbacks, palaeoclimate, statistical inference and machine learning in earth sciences

Paolo Gardoni is the Alfredo H. Ang Family Professor and an Excellence Faculty Scholar in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is also a Professor in the Department of Biomedical and Translational Sciences in the Carle Illinois College of Medicine, and a Fellow of the Office of Risk Management & Insurance Research in the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

His research interests include probabilistic mechanics; sustainable and resilient infrastructure; reliability, risk and life cycle analysis; decision-making under uncertainty; performance assessment of deteriorating systems; modeling of natural hazards and societal impact; ethical, social and legal dimensions of risk; optimal strategies for natural hazard mitigation and disaster recovery; impact of climate change; and engineering ethics.

Tatyana Deryugina: Climate Change and the Economy: The Role of Consumer Demand.

Tatyana is an Associate Professor of Finance at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her current research agenda includes estimating the short- and long-run health effects of natural disasters; understanding individuals’ and families’ location choices; improving measures of natural disaster damage; estimating the consequences of forgone health care; and understanding the role that the news media plays in post-disaster charitable giving. She received her Ph.D. in Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012, her B.A., Magna Cum Laude, Applied Mathematics, University of California at Berkeley, 2006 and her B.S., Summa Cum Laude, Environmental Economics & Policy, University of California at Berkeley, 2006.

Paolo Gardoni: Risk Analysis of Physical Assets: Addressing the current gaps in modeling hazards and structures/infrastructure

Paolo is the Alfredo H. Ang Family Professor and an Excellence Faculty Scholar in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is also a Professor in the Department of Biomedical and Translational Sciences in the Carle Illinois College of Medicine, and a Fellow of the Office of Risk Management & Insurance Research in the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Kaiyu Guan is an assistant professor for the department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He provides solutions for real-life problems, such as large-scale crop monitoring and forecasting, water management and sustainability, and global food security. He uses satellite data, computational models, field work, and machine learning approaches to address how climate and human practices affect crop productivity, water resource availability, and ecosystem functioning.

Donald J. Wuebbles: The Right Climate Data for the Right Task.

Donald's research interests include Atmospheric chemistry and aerosols, climate variability and change, and weather and climate risk. He is the the Harry E. Preble Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Illinois. He also led the development of the Center for Urban Resilience and Environmental Sustainability (CURES) across the three UI campuses and serves as its Director. Change Award from the American Geophysical Union. He is a Fellow of three major professional science societies, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Meteorological Society.

The Actuarial Science Club establishes the strongest, worldwide actuarial network that brings a positive impact to many industries. They develop members to become their best selves personally and professionally by creating opportunities for club members to be successful and inspire others. Learn more.

The College of Media provides a collaborate and innovative space for students and faculty alike. They prepare students to make a difference in industry, society, and their disciplines. Learn more.

The Illinois Risk Lab (IRisk Lab), grew out of the Undergraduate Research Program in Risk and Actuarial Science, which was sponsored by the Society of Actuaries from 2014 to 2017. The IRisk Lab currently serves as an industry-academic collaboration hub, facilitates integration of discovery-based learning experience for students, and showcases state-of-the-art research in all areas of Risk Analysis and Advanced Analytics. Learn more.

Alice B. Champion
Director of Undergraduate Studies Department of Mathematics
(217) 333-9199
abc@illinois.edu

Kim Surles
Senior Director, Gies Business Career Services
(217) 244-2150
ksurles@illinois.edu
abc@illinois.edu

Office of Undergraduate Affairs
1055 Business Instructional Facility
515 E Gregory Drive, Champaign IL 61820
(217) 333-2740
undergrads@business.illinois.edu

College of Liberal Arts & Sciences and GIES College of Business
264 Computing Applications Blg MC-382
605 E Springfield Ave, Champaign IL 61820
(217) 300-5630
PARM@illinois.edu