About the Center

The goal of the Center for Financial Mathematics and Actuarial Research (CFMAR) at UCSB is to encourage interdisciplinary research, and to provide national and international leadership in quantitative finance from different perspectives. The Center brings together faculty, students, and visitors affiliated with the departments of Statistics and Applied Probability, Economics (Econometrics and Finance), Mathematics (Applied Mathematics), Computer Science and others on the UCSB campus and facilitates interdepartmental cooperation in mathematical modeling, statistical and actuarial data analysis and efficient computational methods specific to financial and actuarial data with powerful tools from Data Science.

Research activities of the CFMAR are directed toward study of financial markets, insurance and risk management. Among topics investigated by CFMAR faculty are Systemic Risk, Portfolio Optimization, Monte Carlo Simulation, Longevity Risk, and Predictive Modeling of Healthcare Insurance. The Center provides a forum for the scholarly exchange of ideas across disciplines of economics, statistics, applied mathematics, actuarial science and scientific computation through distinguished lectures, seminars, conferences, scholarly meetings, and publications. CFMAR faculty publish over 15 peer-reviewed articles each year. The Center has hosted 3 editions of the Western Conference for Mathematical Finance (2009, 2014, 2021) and the annual UCSB InsurTech Summit begun in 2019.

Each year the Center hosts several Visiting Assistant Professors/Postdoctoral Fellows working in the area of mathematical finance and actuarial science . Senior CFMAR Visitors offer (mini-) courses in the areas of their expertise, significantly broadening exposure of our students to cutting-edge topics in quantitative finance and risk management. A key focus of CFMAR is graduate training of students working towards PhD with an Emphasis in Financial Mathematics and Statistics, providing a thriving research environment for more than a dozen graduate students at any given time.

The CFMAR brings together the academic and financial communities, providing students contacts with prospective employers and benefiting the local financial, actuarial and risk management industry through access and interpretation of the most recent research advances. Towards these goals, the Center has an active Advisory Board and runs a Corporate Affiliate program.

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