EDHEC PhD in Finance - Programme Faculty Biographies
Faculty
Core programme faculty
Core programme faculty is comprised of EDHEC senior economics and finance professors who design and deliver core PhD in Finance courses and act as primary dissertation directors to PhD candidates, and in particular to all candidates in the “residential track”. Core programme faculty also offer elective courses linked to their expertise and research interests.
René Garcia, MiM (ESSEC), MA in Economics (Université de Montréal), PhD in Economics (Princeton)
EDHEC Business School
Professor of Finance
Academic Director, PhD in Finance
Member, EDHEC Risk and Asset Management Research Centre
Bank of Canada, Research Fellow
CIRANO, Fellow
CIREQ, Research Fellow
Specialist in asset pricing theory, portfolio and risk management, and financial econometrics.
René Garcia is Professor of Finance at EDHEC Business School and Scientific Director of the EDHEC PhD in Finance programme. He was previously a professor at the Université de Montréal and the scientific director of the interuniversity research centre CIRANO. Professor Garcia has held the Hydro-Québec chair in integrated risk management and financial mathematics and is the recipient of a research fellowship from the Bank of Canada. He has published widely in leading journals and participated in the founding of the Journal of Financial Econometrics, for which he serves as editor-in-chief. His research interests in finance revolve around the valuation of financial assets, portfolio management, and risk management. In econometrics, he is interested in nonlinear models, in particular regime-switching models.
Stéphane Gregoir, Eng (École Polytechnique de Paris), MSc in Economics (ENSAE), MSc in Applied Mathematics (Paris IX)
EDHEC Business School
Professor of Economics
Director, EDHEC Economics Research Centre
French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) Administrator
Specialist in macroeconomics and econometrics, in particular in time-series methods applied to modelling of the business cycle or evaluation of economic policies.
Stéphane Gregoir is Professor of Economics at EDHEC Business School and Director of EDHEC Economics Research Centre. Prior to joining the EDHEC Business School, he was director of the economics and statistics research centre CREST and senior officer at INSEE, the French national institute for statistics and economic studies. While at INSEE, he also carried out academic research and teaching activities. He has been a regular lecturer at École Polytechnique de Paris since 2000 and at ENSAE since 1999. His research work relates principally to macroeconomics and econometrics. He has also worked on the theoretical analysis of expectation formation and was awarded the Tjalling C. Koopmans Prize for his contribution to econometric theory. He has published in leading journals and currently serves as editor for Annales d’Économie et de Statistique, Econometrics Journal of the British Royal Economic Society and Économie et Statistique.
Abraham Lioui, MSc in Finance (Paris I), MA in Economics (Paris I), MA in Probability and Stochastic Processes (Paris VI), PhD in Management (ESSEC & Paris I)
EDHEC Business School
Professor of Finance
Member, EDHEC Risk and Asset Management Research Centre
Specialist in portfolio and asset pricing theory, derivatives and risk management.
Abraham Lioui is Professor of Finance at EDHEC Business School. He was previously at the department of economics at Bar Ilan University where he held the Vice Chair position. He has published widely in and refereed for leading journals and is regularly invited to the programme committee of the European Finance Association’s annual conference. His research interests in finance revolve around the valuation of financial assets, portfolio management, and risk management. His economics research looks at the relationship between monetary policy and the stock market.
Florencio López-de-Silanes, MA and PhD in Economics (Harvard)
EDHEC Business School
Professor of Finance
Member, EDHEC Risk and Asset Management Research Centre
National Bureau of Economic Research, Faculty Research Fellow and Research Associate
The Fraser Institute, Board Member, Editorial Advisory Board
Specialist in international corporate finance and financial markets, legal reform, and privatisation.
Florencio López-de-Silanes is Professor of Finance at EDHEC Business School. At the EDHEC Risk and Asset Management Research Centre, he conducts a programme on fund governance and performance. He has previously held faculty positions at University of Amsterdam, Yale, Harvard, and ITAM. His research interests and main publications are in the areas of international corporate finance and financial markets, legal reform, and privatisation. He has been an advisor on these topics to several governments, international institutions, and corporations. He has published widely in leading economics and finance journals and has been repeatedly distinguished for research achievements. Since November 2004, he has been one of the three most cited researchers in the area of economics and business according to ESI Statistics.
Lionel Martellini, MiM (ESCP-EAP), MSc in Economics (ENSAE), MSc in Statistics (Paris VI), PhD in Finance (Berkeley)
EDHEC Business School
Professor of Finance
Scientific Director, EDHEC Risk and Asset Management Research Centre
South European Center for Contemporary Finance, Member of the advisory board
Specialist in asset allocation, derivatives, fixed income modelling, and alternative investment.
Lionel Martellini is Professor of Finance at EDHEC Business School and Scientific Director of the EDHEC Risk and Asset Management Research Centre. He was previously on the faculty of the University of Southern California. He has served as a consultant to various institutional investors, investment banks, and asset management firms on questions related to risk management, alternative investment strategies, and asset allocation decisions. Professor Martellini’s research on asset management, portfolio theory, derivatives valuation, fixed income products, and alternative investment has appeared in leading journals. He sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Portfolio Management and the Journal of Alternative Investments.
Pierre Mella-Barral, MSc in Engineering (ENSAM), MSc in Project Analysis (York), MPhil in Finance and PhD in Economics (Cambridge)
EDHEC Business School
Professor of Finance
Member, EDHEC Risk and Asset Management Research Centre
Specialist in corporate finance and continuous-time valuation models.
Pierre Mella-Barral is Professor of Finance at EDHEC Business School. He has previously held faculty positions at HEC Paris, London Business School, and the London School of Economics; his research interests revolve around asset valuation and corporate finance. The work he has published in leading journals incorporates banking and corporate finance issues into the framework of dynamic valuation models and adapts concepts borrowed from strategy to shed light on how firms select their organisational form.
Affiliate Programme Faculty
The rich academic networks of the programme’s core faculty have been tapped to assemble an outstanding cadre of affiliate faculty. Affiliate programme faculty design and deliver elective courses which correspond to their areas of expertise and act, along with core programme faculty, as primary dissertation directors to PhD candidates on the “executive track”.
Yacine Aït-Sahalia, Eng (École Polytechnique de Paris), MA (IEP Paris), MSc in Economics (ENSAE), PhD in Economics (MIT)
Princeton University
Otto A. Hack 1903 Professor of Finance and Economics
Director of the Bendheim Center for Finance
National Bureau of Economic Research, Research Associate
Specialist in financial econometrics, continuous-time modelling, and derivatives pricing.
Yacine Aït-Sahalia is the Otto A. Hack 1903 Professor of Finance and Economics and Director of the Bendheim Center for Finance at Princeton University. Prior to joining Princeton in 1998, he was Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. He has published widely in leading journals and been distinguished for research and teaching excellence. He is an elected fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and of the Econometric Society. He currently serves as associate editor of five journals devoted to finance and quantitative methods, including Econometrica, Journal of Finance, and Journal of Econometrics.
Tim Bollerslev, MSc in Economics & Mathematics (Aarhus), PhD in Economics (San Diego)
Duke University
Juanita and Clifton Kreps Professor of Economics, Department of Economics
Professor of Finance, Fuqua School of Business
National Bureau of Economic Research, Research Associate
Specialist in time-series econometrics and empirical finance.
Tim Bollerslev is the Juanita and Clifton Kreps Professor of Economics at Duke University where he also holds an appointment as Professor of Finance at the Fuqua School of Business. Before joining Duke University in 1998, he held positions in the Economics Department and Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and at the University of Virginia. He has published widely in leading journals and his GARCH model has revolutionised the way academics and practitioners measure and forecast volatility. He is an elected fellow of the Econometric Society. He currently serves as co-editor for the Journal of Applied Econometrics.
Rama Cont, Eng (École Polytechnique de Paris), MSc in Theoretical Physics (ENS), PhD in Mathematics (Paris XI)
Columbia University
Associate Professor, Department of Operations Research
Director, Center for Financial Engineering
French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Researcher
Specialist in stochastic modelling of financial markets, inverse problems and model calibration, computational methods in finance, and credit risk modelling
Rama Cont is Associate professor and Director of the Center for Financial Engineering at Columbia University and CNRS researcher at the École Polytechnique where he taught prior to joining Columbia in 2006. He has also held visiting faculty positions at Osaka University and Princeton University. His research deals with the stochastic modelling of financial markets and computational methods in finance. He is the editor in chief of the Encyclopaedia of Quantitative Finance (Wiley) and a founding partner of Finance Concepts, a risk management advisory firm based in Paris and New York.
Jaksa Cvitanic, MSc in Mathematics (University of Zagreb), MPhil and PhD in Statistics (Columbia)
Caltech
Professor of Mathematical Finance
Specialist in stochastic methods applied to dynamic asset allocation, valuation, financial strategy and optimal contract definition.
Jaksa Cvitanic is Professor of Mathematical Finance at Caltech. Prior to joining Caltech in 2005, he held positions as Professor of Mathematics and Economics at USC and Associate Professor of Statistics at Columbia University. He is regarded as a leading expert in mathematical finance and his work has focused on the application of stochastic methods to a wide variety of market and corporate finance issues. He has published numerous articles in leading journals and currently serves as co-editor of Finance & Stochastics and Mathematics and Financial Economics and as associate editor of Annals of Finance, Mathematical Finance, Asia-Pacific Financial Markets, and Glasnik Matematicki.
Sanjiv Ranjan Das, MBA (IIM), ICWAI, MSc in Computer Science (Berkeley), MPhil and PhD in Finance (NYU)
Santa Clara University
Professor of Finance
Specialist in default risk modelling, derivative pricing models, portfolio theory, and venture capital.
Sanjiv Das is Professor of Finance and Chair of the Finance Department at Santa Clara University. He previously held faculty appointments as Associate Professor at Harvard Business School and UC Berkeley. Prior to joining academia, he worked for six years in derivatives with Citibank. His research centres on the modelling of default risk, derivative pricing models, portfolio theory, and venture capital. He has published over fifty articles in academic journals, and has won numerous awards for research and teaching. He edits various academic journals and is notably associate editor of Management Science, senior editor of the Journal of Investment Management, and co-editor of the Journal of Derivatives.
Jérôme Detemple, MiM (ESSEC), MSc (Paris Dauphine), PhD in Finance (University of Pennsylvania), PhD in Economics (Strasbourg I)
Boston University
Professor, Finance and Economics Department
Everett W. Lord Distinguished Faculty Scholar, School of Management
Specialist in quantitative methods applied to derivatives pricing, consumption-portfolio choice, and asset pricing.
Jérôme Detemple is Professor in the Finance and Economics Department of Boston University and Everett W. Lord Distinguished Faculty Scholar in the School of Management at Boston University. He previously held faculty appointments as Professor at McGill, and Associate Professor at Columbia. His research interests currently centre on American-style derivative securities, asset pricing and market frictions, consumption-portfolio choice, managerial contracts, and numerical methods. He has published widely in leading journals and is known for his contributions to derivative valuation, risk management, and asset allocation. He has edited various leading journals devoted to quantitative methods and derivatives and currently serves as associate editor of Management Science and as co-editor of Mathematical Finance.
Francis X. Diebold, MA and PhD (University of Pennsylvania)
University of Pennsylvania
National Bureau of Economic Research, Research Associate Specialist in financial and macroeconomic modelling, forecasting and risk management Francis X. Diebold is Cohen Professor of Economics, Professor of Finance and Statistics, and Co-Director of the Financial Institutions Center at the University of Pennsylvania and its Wharton School. He has extensive experience simultaneously in academics, financial markets, and economic policy. On the academic side, he has published extensively and served on numerous editorial boards. He is an elected fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Statistical Association, and the recipient of Sloan, Guggenheim and Humboldt research awards, as well as numerous awards for teaching excellence. On the financial market side he has, for example, served as Executive Director at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, and on the policy side he has served as an economist at the U.S. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, working with both Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan.
Cohen Professor of Economics, School of Arts and Sciences
António Sampaio e Mello, MBA and MSc in Economics (Columbia), PhD in Economics (London)
University of Wisconsin - Madison
Frank Graner Professor of Finance
Center for Economic Policy Research
Fellow
Specialist in valuation, financial policy, corporate risk management and international finance.
António S. Mello holds the Frank Graner Chair in finance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has taught at various institutions including the MIT Sloan School of Management. Prior to joining academia, Professor S. Mello was Chief Economist of the Central Bank of Portugal and a member of the Subcommittee of Monetary Policy of European Central Bank Governors. Professor S. Mello has consulting experience with governments, international institutions, private financial institutions, and corporations worldwide. He is former Director of a private equity firm and currently sits on the investment committee of a REIT. His research centres on corporate financial strategy and hedging, arbitrage and liquidity. He has published widely in leading journals.
Nicholas Polson, MA (Oxford), PhD (Nottingham)
University of Chicago
Professor of Econometrics and Statistics, Graduate School of Business
Specialist in simulation methods, financial econometrics, and Bayesian inference.
Nicholas Polson is Professor of Econometrics and Statistics at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. Prior to joining the University of Chicago in 1991, he taught at Carnegie Mellon University and Nottingham University. He conducts research on Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods, financial econometrics, and Bayesian inference and is credited for having added new algorithms and methodologies to these fields. He has published in leading journals and is currently an associate editor for the Journal of Econometrics, the Journal of Financial Econometrics, and the Journal of the American Statistical Association.
Fernando Zapatero, MA Law and MA Business Administration (ICADE), PhD in Finance (Columbia)
University of Southern California
Professor of Finance and Business, Economics Department and Marshall School of Business
Specialist in applied quantitative methods, portfolio management, and asset pricing.
Fernando Zapatero is Professor of Finance and Business and Chair of the Finance and Business Economics Department at the University of Southern California. Prior to joining USC in 1998, he held appointments as faculty with ITAM, University of Texas at Austin and ICADE as well as visiting faculty at UC Berkeley. His research centres on applied quantitative methods, portfolio management and asset pricing. He has published numerous articles in leading journals and currently serves as associate editor for Annals of Finance, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Mathematical Finance, and Mathematics and Financial Economics.
