Member Bios

C. David Levermore, University of Maryland
Chair
Dr. Levermore is a professor in the Institute for Physical Science and Technology in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Maryland. He earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Mathematics at the Courant Institute of New York University. He has served in visiting positions at the University of Paris, University of Toulouse, Kyoto University, Institute Henri Poincare, and at the Ecole Normale Superieure. He has served on the External Advisory Panel to NSF’s VIGRE Program, the External Advisory Committee to the Center for Nonlinear Studies for Los Alamos National Laboratory, and on the SIAM Science Policy Committee. Earlier in his career, he spent a decade at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, engaged in research into advanced methods of computational science and engineering.

Tanya Styblo Beder, SBCC
With over 25 years of experience in the global capital markets, Ms. Beder founded and served as President of SBCC from 1987 to 1994, returning as Chairman in 2006. During the interim, Ms. Beder held two senior positions in the asset management industry. She was CEO of Tribeca Global Management LLC, a $3 billion dollar multi-strategy fund with offices in New York, London and Singapore and Managing Director of Caxton Associates LLC, a $10 billion asset management firm in New York. At SBCC Group, Ms. Beder heads the global strategy, crisis and risk management, derivatives, workout and fund launch practices. Clients include banks, broker dealers, hedge funds, pension funds, mutual funds, insurance companies and corporations from around the world.

Ms. Beder’s career includes numerous projects borne from the financial distress of the stock market crashes of 1997, 2001 and 2008; the asset/liability and savings & loan crises of the late 1980s, the derivatives losses of the 1990s (Orange County, Bankers Trust, David Askin’s Granite Funds, CMOs, inverse floaters, kitchen sink bonds), the LTCM and currency crises in 1998, and the bursting of the credit bubble and meltdown that started in 2007. Early on in this crisis she was called upon by the Florida State Legislature to assist in the multi-billion dollar run on the Local Government Investment Pool. Currently she assists numerous institutional investors, boards of directors, senior managers, legislators and regulators regarding the liquidity crisis, valuations and losses in the credit space (default swaps, CDOs, CLOs, CBOs, CDSs, ABCP and derivatives). She is called upon frequently to speak on the current state of the markets and how to reengineer market risk, credit risk and operational risk management going forward.

Ms. Beder also served as President of Capital Market Risk Advisors and was a Vice President of The First Boston Corporation (now Credit Suisse) where she focused on mergers and acquisitions in London and New York and then on mortgage-backed securities, derivatives trading and fixed income research.

Ms. Beder is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Association of Financial Engineers where she co-chairs its Investor Risk Committee. From 1998 through 2003 Ms. Beder was Chairman of the Association. Euromoney named Ms. Beder one of the top 50 women in finance around the world. While CEO of Tribeca, Absolute Return awarded the prestigious Institutional Investment Manager of the Year Award.

In academia she is on the Advisory Board of Columbia University's Financial Engineering Program and is an appointed Fellow of the International Center for Finance at Yale. She also serves on the Board of Directors of The Speyer Legacy School, a new independent school in New York City whose mission it is to meet the needs of advanced learners through a unique, accelerated and enriched curriculum. Ms. Beder has taught numerous courses on the adjunct faculty of the Yale University's School of Management, Columbia University's Graduate School of Business and the New York Institute of Finance.

She recently was appointed to a second term on the National Board of Mathematics and their Applications. She has appeared as an expert before the United States Committee on Financial Services regarding mark-to-market and modeling practices for complex financial instruments, the United States Congressional Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance regarding derivatives and leverage, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development regarding risk in the global financial landscape, IOSCO regarding valuations, the U.S. Senate Special Committee regarding the Year 2000 Technology Problem and the World Bank and IMF regarding private equity and hedge funds.

Ms Beder was an author of the Risk Standards for Institutional Investors and Institutional Investment Managers and has written numerous articles in the financial area that have been published by The Journal of Portfolio Management, The Financial Analysts Journal, The Harvard Business Review, The Journal of Financial Engineering, Probus Publishing, John Wiley & Sons, and Simon & Schuster.

Ms. Beder holds a M.B.A. in finance from Harvard University and a B.A. in mathematics from Yale University.

Philip Bernstein, Microsoft Corporation
Dr. Bernstein is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and an Affiliate Professor of Computer Science at University of Washington. He is a leading figure in field of software design to manage data. In recent years, he has focused on metadata management—e.g., manipulation of schemas that describe databases, software interfaces, system configurations, object models, and presentation layout—to reduce the programming effort needed for such tasks as data translation, schema evolution, data integration, cataloging, and lineage tracing. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and treasurer and a member of the board of the Computing Research Association. He holds a B.S. in engineering from Cornell University and Ph.D. in computer science from University of Toronto.

Patricia Brennan, University of Wisconsin
Dr. Brennan is Moehlman Bascom Professor at the School of Nursing and College of Engineering at the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Brennan's research is in the area of nursing informatics, and she examines ways to use the Internet, home-based computer systems, and specialized information resources to promote self-care and disease management skills among patients and their family caregivers. She is currently leading a project that brings together leading experts in data mining and technical optimization to improve the planning and development of regional health information organizations, part of the emerging national health information infrastructure (NHII). She earned a Ph.D. and an M.S. in industrial engineering from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, an M.S. in nursing from the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.S. in nursing from the University of Delaware. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine.

Emery N. Brown, Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Harvard Medical School/ Massachusetts General Hospital
Dr. Brown is the Massachusetts General Hospital Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, and a professor of computational neuroscience and health sciences and technology at MIT. Dr. Brown is an anesthesiologist-statistician who uses functional imaging to study in humans how anesthetic drugs act in the brain to create the state of general anesthesia. He also develops signal processing algorithms to characterize how ensembles of neurons represent and transmit information in the patterns of their ensemble spiking activity. Dr. Brown is a member of the Association of University Anesthesiologists, a Fellow of the American Institute of Biomedical Engineering, the American Statistical Association, the AAAS, the IEEE, a member of the Institute of Medicine and a 2007 recipient of an NIH Director’s Pioneer Award. Dr. Brown received a B.A. in Applied Mathematics (magna cum laude) from Harvard College, an M.D. (magna cum laude) from Harvard Medical School and a Ph.D. in statistics from Harvard University.

Gerald G. Brown, Distinguished Professor of Operations Research at the Naval Postgraduate School
He has taught and conducted basic and applied research in optimization theory and optimization-based decision support since 1973, earning awards for both outstanding teaching and research. His military research has been applied by every uniformed service, in areas ranging from strategic nuclear targeting to capital planning. Prof. Brown has been awarded the Rist Prize for military operations research and has been credited with guiding investments of more than a trillion dollars. He has designed and implemented decision support software currently used by two-thirds of the Fortune 50 companies, in areas ranging from vehicle routing to supply-chain optimization. His research appears in scores of open-literature publications and classified reports, many of which are seminal references in the field. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science, and a founding director of Insight, Inc., the leading provider of strategic supply-chain optimization-based decision support tools to the private sector.

Ricardo Caballero, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dr. Caballero is head of the department of Economics, Ford International Professor of Economics, and co-director of the World Economic Laboratory at MIT and an NBER Research Associate in economic fluctuations and growth. A Chilean native, he received his Ph.D. from MIT. Before returning to MIT he taught at Columbia University for three years, and was an Olin Fellow at the NBER. Prof. Caballero has also been a visiting scholar and consultant at the European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve Board, the Inter-American Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and several central banks and government institutions around the world. His teaching and research fields are macroeconomics, international economics, and finance. His current research looks at global capital markets, speculative episodes and financial bubbles, systemic crises prevention mechanisms, and dynamic restructuring. His policy work focuses on aggregate risk management and insurance arrangements for emerging market economies. He was the winner of the 2002 Frisch Medal of the Econometric Society and, in January of this year, he shared the Smith Breeden Prize of the American Finance Association.

Gunnar Carlsson Professor of mathematics at Stanford University
His research is in algebraic topology, algebraic K-theory, and homotopy theory. He applies his research through Stanford’s project on Topological Methods in Scientific Computing, Statistics, and Computer Science, a multi-disciplinary effort to develop flexible topological methods and software to allow the analysis of data that are difficult to analyze using classical linear methods. Data obtained by sampling from highly curved manifolds or singular algebraic varieties in Euclidean space are typical examples. Important goals include the identification, location, and classification of qualitative features of the data set, such as the presence of corners, edges, cone points, etc. and the use of homology applied to canonically defined blowups and tangent complexes to distinguish between two-dimensional shapes in three-dimensional Euclidean space. Prof. Carlsson received his PhD from Stanford in 1976.

Brenda Dietrich, Director of Mathematical Sciences at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center
Her research includes work in manufacturing modeling and scheduling, inventory management, transportation logistics, mathematical programming, and combinatorial optimization. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences (IE/MS) at Northwestern University, a member of the Industrial Advisory Board for both IMA (University of Minnesota) and DIMACS (Rutgers), a member of the IBM Academy of Technology, and has served on the Board of INFORMS. She is the holder of ten patents, is author or co-author of numerous publications, and co-editor of the book Mathematics of the Internet: E-Auction and Markets. Dr. Dietrich joined IBM Research in 1984. She holds a BS in Mathematics from UNC, and received a Ph.D. in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering from Cornell University. She was an invitee to the 2006 Frontiers of Engineering conference. She is current President of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS).

Debra Elkins, Quantitative Research & Analytics Division of the Allstate Insurance Company in Northbrook, Illinois
Her research interests include risk modeling for enterprise operations, manufacturing and supply chain vulnerability analysis and disruption consequence modeling, decision-making under uncertainty, computational issues in stochastic processes, applied probability and statistics, and enterprise-scale simulation. Dr. Elkins has served as an industry technical expert for the Department of Homeland Security and the National Science Foundation, and she has briefed the U.S. National Defense University/ Industrial College of the Armed Forces on global manufacturing and supply chain risks. Dr. Elkins received a B.S. in Mathematical Physics from Sweet Briar College in Virginia, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She received her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering–Operations Research from Texas A&M University.

Susan Friedlander, professor of mathematics at the University of Southern California and director of the Center for Applied Mathematical Sciences
The Center’s program encompasses many research projects, groups, and programs, including work in computational biology, mathematical and computational finance, mathematical methods in pharmacokinetics, target detection and tracking, information assurance, image processing, and information fusion in distributed sensor systems. Her expertise is in mathematical fluid dynamics and partial differential equations. She is a member of the American Mathematical Society (AMS), for which she has served on committees and organized conferences. She received her PhD in 1972 from Princeton University.

Peter Wilcox Jones, James E. English Professor of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at Yale University
His expertise is in real, complex, and Fourier analysis, singular integrals, potential theory, and dynamical systems. His focus is on core mathematics, and has also applied methods of analysis and probability theory to address problems such as how to structure and search libraries of information. He has chaired the Science Advisory Board of the NSF-funded Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics at UCLA since its establishment in 1999. In that capacity, he has been a strong voice for a unified view of the mathematical sciences and for strengthening interdisciplinary linkages. He received his doctorate from UCLA in pure mathematics in 1978. In addition to his NAS membership, he is also a Sloan Fellow, a foreign member of the Swedish Academy of Science and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has published over 75 scholarly papers and mentored 17 doctoral students

Dr. Kenneth L. Judd, Stanford University
Dr. Judd is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he has been since 1988. He is also a Research Associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research. An expert in econometrics and computational methods, Dr. Judd is author of the book Numerical Methods in Economics. He received B.A. degrees in mathematics and computer science, M.A. degrees in mathematics and economics, and a PhD (1980) in economics, all from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Charles M. Lucas, Deer Isle Consulting
Charles M. Lucas heads his own firm, Deer Isle Consulting. He is retired as Corporate Vice President and Director of Market Risk Management at American International Group (AIG). Prior to joining AIG in 1996, he was Senior Vice President and Director of Risk Assessment and Control at Republic National Bank of New York, where he headed the Risk Assessment and Control Department, reporting to the Risk Assessment Committee of the Board of Directors. Prior to joining Republic in late 1993, Dr. Lucas was Senior Vice President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) in charge of the international capital markets staff. He joined the Federal Reserve in 1968 as an economist in the domestic research division, moving through a variety of posts until being appointed in 1974 as an officer of the FRBNY with the title of manager and assigned to the statistics department. He was granted a leave of absence in August 1978 to work with the IMF on a technical assistance mission to the Central Bank of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Dr. Lucas has also consulted in monetary policy planning and implementation with Bank Indonesia, Bangladesh Bank, and the Bank of Morocco. He returned to the FRBNY in 1979, serving in a variety of positions culminating in senior vice president. Dr. Lucas is a member of the Advisory Group on the Financial Engineering Program at the Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley; is a Member of the Corporation, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; and a Director of Algorithmics, Incorporated He holds a PhD in economics from the University of California at Berkeley.

Vijayan N. Nair, University of Michigan
Dr. Nair is a professor of statistics and of industrial and operations engineering at the University of Michigan. He is an expert in experimental design and system development, particularly in industrial applications. He has done extensive consulting work with the automotive and telecommunications industries, which has required the development, testing, and analysis of large databases for quality control. Prior to joining the University of Michigan, he was a research scientist at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey for 15 years. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Statistical Association, and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, and a senior member of the American Society for Quality. He served as editor of Technometrics and as joint editor of International Statistical Review. He was a member of the Committee on National Statistics and has served on a number of National Research Council committees. Dr. Nair holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Malaya and a PhD in statistics from the University of California at Berkeley.

Claudia Neuhauser, University of Minnesota
Dr. Neuhauser is Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and an adjunct professor of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior at the University of Minnesota, where she also directs the Center for Learning Innovation and the program of Graduate Studies in Biomedical Informatics and Computational Biology. She received her PhD in mathematics from Cornell University after completing her undergraduate work in Heidelberg, Germany. Before joining the faculty of the University of Minnesota, Dr. Neuhauser served as a professor at the University of Southern California, the University of Wisconsin, Madison, the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and the University of California, Davis. Dr. Neuhauser’s work on spatial stochastic processes centers on mechanisms of coexistence in food webs, including disease dynamics. Mathematical models are used to investigate nonequilibrium dynamics after large-scale perturbations in natural and managed habitats with the goal of understanding their evolutionary and ecological consequences. Physiological models of phytoplankton, zooplankton, and bacteria are used to investigate ecosystem consequences of physiological tradeoffs.

J. Tinsley Oden, University of Texas at Austin
Dr. Oden is Associate Vice President for Research, founder and director of the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, and a professor of Mathematics and of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin. He has authored over 500 scientific publications, including authoring or editing 50 books. Dr. Oden is an Honorary Member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and a Fellow of six international scientific/technical societies. He is a Fellow, founding member, and first president of the U.S. Association for Computational Mechanics and the International Association for Computational Mechanics. He is a Fellow and past President of both the American Academy of Mechanics and the Society of Engineering Science, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Among the numerous awards he has received for his work, he has been awarded the A. C. Eringen Medal, the Worcester Reed Warner Medal, the Lohmann Medal, the Theodore von Karman Medal, the John von Neumann medal, the Newton/Gauss Congress Medal, and the Stephan P. Timoshenko Medal. He has been knighted as “Chevalier des Palmes Academiques” by the French government and he holds five honorary doctorates.

Donald Saari, Professor of Economics and Mathematics at the University of California at Irvine
He also directs the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences. His 2001 election to the NAS carries the citation “Saari has been instrumental in applying chaos theory and mathematical principles to explain voting outcomes, galaxy formation, and economic dynamics. He showed that much accepted wisdom about elections is highly flawed. He also elucidated some of the complex considerations that need to be factored into economic analyses.” His broad interests, and especially his strengths in the behavioral sciences and in complexity, will help the BMSA as it explores topics related to complex systems, risk, and social sciences. He recently finished a term on the Mathematical Sciences Education Board.

J.B. Silvers, Elizabeth M. and William C. Treuhaft Professor of Health Systems Management at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University
He serves as Faculty Director of the Health Systems Management Center and holds a joint appointment in epidemiology with the School of Medicine. His articles in financial management and health services have been published in the Journal of Finance, the Journal of the American Medical Association, Medical Care, Health Services Research and many others. Prof. Silvers currently serves on the board of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) and their finance and audit committee, Nursing Advisory Council and Work Group on Quality & Payment Alignment (Vice Chair). Formerly he served as a Commissioner on the Prospective Payment Assessment Commission (ProPAC, the predecessor of MedPAC), as well as other state and federal commissions. He also has been CEO of a health plan and Senior Associate Dean of the Weatherhead School of Management. He earned his Ph.D. in 1971 from Stanford University.

George Sugihara, University of California at San Diego
Theoretician at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, who has worked in a variety of fields, including algebraic topology, quantitative finance, and more recently fisheries and neurobiology. His research is broadly focused on developing novel ways for probing complex data to more fully understanding natural systems. Some specific research areas include landscape ecology, food-web structure, species abundance patterns, conservation biology, atmospheric science and neurobiology. One of his most interdisciplinary contributions involves work developed with Lord Robert May of Oxford University concerning methods of forecasting nonlinear and chaotic systems. This work took him to the arena of investment banking where he took a five-year leave from academe to become a Managing Director for Deutsche Bank. There he made a successful application of these theoretical methods to forecast erratic market behavior. He is currently investigating the application of these methods to fisheries, and is interested in introducing financial derivatives instruments as a means of risk abatement and to help rationalize the fishing industry toward sustainability. A former holder of the John Dove Isaacs Chair of Natural Philosophy at SIO/UCSD, Sugihara is recipient of various international awards, and is currently a Professor at Scripps and an Associate at the Neurosciences Research Institute.