2003, 2004, 2006 Symposium Leader: Shaun Wang

Shaun Wang, PhD is the director of actuarial science programs in the Department of Risk Management and Insurance at Georgia State University's Robinson College of Business and holder of the Robert W. Batten Chair of Actuarial Science. He is an internationally renowned expert on the quantification and measurement of risk and a leading actuarial scholar in enterprise risk management. He holds memberships in the American Academy of Actuaries and the American Risk and Insurance Association.

As an active researcher, Dr. Wang has published extensively on the topics of risk measurement, correlation modeling, and the pricing of risk, in such leading journals as the ASTIN Bulletin, the Journal of Risk and Insurance, The North American Actuarial Journal, and Insurance: Mathematics and Economics. He currently serves as Editor of the ASTIN Bulletin—the journal of the International Actuarial Association—and has served in the past on the editorial boards of many leading publications. He is also Executive Director of the ERM Institute International, Ltd.

Prior to joining the Georgia State faculty, he was assistant vice president and group research director at SCOR—a global reinsurance company. While at SCOR, Dr. Wang developed a universal pricing formula—now commonly known as the Wang transform—for insurance risks, credit risks, and weather derivatives. He extended the Wang transform to analyze catastrophe bond transactions, corporate bond yield spreads, and applied the new 2-factor model to the pricing of aggregate stop-loss reinsurance and catastrophe reinsurance.

Dr. Wang is an experienced educator, with visiting professor appointments at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, as well as at Nankai University and Peking University, two of China’s leading academic institutions. He has also held permanent teaching positions at the University of Waterloo and Concordia University in Canada. He holds an undergraduate degree in mathematics from China’s Beijing University and a doctoral degree in statistics from the University of Waterloo.

2001 Symposium Leader: Sam Gutterman

Sam Gutterman, FSA, FCAS has been Director and Consulting Actuary for the PricewaterhouseCoopers Actuarial and Insurance Management Solutions Group since 1986. This group provides actuarial consulting services and audit assistance for insurance companies and insurance related clients, as well as firm-wide insurance and actuarial projects.

Mr. Gutterman is very involved with the Society of Actuaries: he is a past member of the Board of Governors, a Past President, a Past Vice President of the Health Section, and past chair and member of many committees. Also active in the Casualty Actuarial Society, he is a member of the Actuarial Principles Committee and a past member of several committees.

1999 Symposium Leader: Harold D. Skipper, Jr, PhD

Harold D. Skipper Jr. retired in July 2005 as a professor of risk management and insurance in the Department of Risk Management and Insurance at Georgia State University. He was also a holder of the C. V. Starr Chair of International Insurance and a past holder (1999) of the Thomas P. Bowles Jr. Chair of Actuarial Science. Dr. Skipper served as a consultant to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on insurance-related public policy issues. He was Economics Affairs Officer with the United Nations in Geneva and has been a visiting professor at the University of Paris and at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

He is past President of the American Risk and Insurance Association and past Vice President of the International Insurance Society. He is a member of many professional organizations and serves on the Boards of Directors of several organizations.

He has authored several dozen articles in various national and international journals and is author/editor of the textbook International Risk and Insurance: An Environmental/Managerial Approach and is co-author with Kenneth Black, Jr. of Life and Health Insurance, now in its 13th edition.

1998 Symposium Leader: Patrick L. Brockett, PhD

Dr. Brockett is Director of the Risk Management and Insurance Program and Gus S. Wortham Memorial Chairholder in Risk Management and Insurance in the College and Graduate School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin where he teaches full time in risk management and insurance. He holds joint appointmnts as a Full Professor in the departments of Finance, Mathematics, and Management Science and Information Systems. In addition, he is the Janey Slaughter Briscoe Research Fellow at the IC2 Institute and a Faculty Research Scientist at the Applied Research Laboratories at The University of Texas at Austin, and is the former Director of the Actuarial Science Program and former Director of the Center for Cybernetic Studies in the Graduate School of Business.

Besides refereeing for numerous academic journals, he has published two books and over 100 journal articles. His articles in risk management and insurance have won several awards from the American Risk and Insurance Association (for Best Feature Article and for Best Communication Article) and from the American Statistical Association (for the Most Outstanding Statistical Application paper published in any field, in any journal, in any language, anywhere in the world), Society of Actuaries (The Halmstad Prize for the most outstanding English language publication in actuarial science in the world), and from the International Insurance Society (best paper award). He has won The University of Texas university wide Outstanding Graduate Teacher Award as well as three different research awards from the Graduate School of Business. His research interests include formal and theoretical works on risk management topics as well as non-theoretical institutional or qualitative investigations into insurance contracts, ethics, and economics. He has also served as an expert consultant to regulatory bodies, law firms, and businesses

2nd Chairholder: James C. Hickman

Dr. Hickman is an emeritus professor and dean at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Hickman received a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa in 1950. In 1952 and 1961, he received his master's and doctoral degrees, respectively, from the University of Iowa in mathematics and statistics. From 1961 to 1972, he served on the University of Iowa's faculty in the statistics department. From 1972 to 1993, he was a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; and from 1985 to 1990, he was dean of the School of Business.  He served as second Bowles Chairholder at Georgia State University in 1996.

Hickman served on the Society of Actuaries board of governors and from 1975-1977 as vice president. Since 1986 he has been director of Blue Cross and Blue Shield United of Wisconsin and since 1989 he has served as a director of the board of pensions of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

1st Chairholder: Hans Bühlmann

Dr. Bühlmann has been a professor in mathematics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland, since 1966. He received his degree in mathematics at ETH in 1955. From 1956-1958 he was a graduate student and research fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. After earning his Ph.D. from the Swiss Federal Institute in 1959, he was an actuary at Swiss Reinsurance Co. He has served as a visiting professor at UC/Berkeley, University of Michigan, University of Manitoba, Université Libre de Bruxelles, and Tokyo University. From 1981 to the present he has served the Swiss Federal Institute in several additional capacities. In 1981 he became the chairman of the mathematics department; in 1986 he was the dean of mathematics and physics; and from 1987-1990 he served as the president. He received a doctor honoris causa degree from the University of Amsterdam in 1992 and from the City University of London in 1993. He served as the first Bowles Chairholder at Georgia State University in 1995.