An Invitation to Undergraduate Research in Risk Management: Actuarial Science, Mathematical Finance, and Sports Analytics

Albert Cohen is the Director of the Actuarial Science Program and the Director of the Graduate Certificate in Sports Analytics at Michigan State University. Dr. Cohen received his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 2007 under the supervision of Dr. David Kinderlehrer, and his current research focuses on the interaction between probability, science, and financial economics. This includes work on the stochastic modeling of coarsening in grain networks, recovery risk in corporate bonds, and performance-based contract valuation in sports analytics. Dr. Cohen has recently joined the editorial board of Risk Management and Insurance Review as an associate editor.

Sooie-Hoe Loke has collaborated with many talented undergraduate and graduate students on a wide range of research projects during his time at Central Washington University. Dr. Loke has received more than half a million dollars in external grants as a PI or Co-PI to support undergraduate research initiatives, with the most recent award being a $473,353 NSF grant (DMS-2050692) to fund a summer REU site at CWU from 2021 to 2024. Having mentored more than three dozen of undergraduate students from all over the nation, Dr. Loke has secured research funding for students and faculty mentors via the aforementioned NSF grant, the SIAM-Simons Undergraduate Summer Research grant, the National Research Experiences for Undergraduates Program (NREUP) grant, and the Center for Undergraduate Research in Mathematics (CURM) grant, as well as four internal CWU grants.