I am Professor of Mathematics and Director of the Institute for Financial and Actuarial Mathematics (IFAM), in the Department of Mathematical Sciences, at the University of Liverpool.
My daily job means teaching mathematics, supervising graduate students and doing research in insurance mathematics. In addition to University of Liverpool students, I regularly teach and supervise master (MSc) students from the African Institute of Mathematical Science (AIMS) network. Prior to being an academic, I worked as an actuary and led the life insurance department of one of the first private Romanian insurance companies.
In 2020, I was one of the two academics named on the 100 Women to Watch list of the Cranfield University’s School of Management, as ideally suited to board positions on FTSE 350 companies. Since 2021, I am the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the University of Liverpool Pension Fund.
I serve as associate editor in several scientific journals and am active in the Bernoulli Society for Mathematical Statistics and Probability. My expertise is in analytical methods for deriving exact or asymptotic results for ruin (default) probabilities, in the insurance market.
My recent research interests are on fair insurance design from gender perspectives, and on financial inclusion, specifically fair pricing and regulation of microfinance and microinsurance practices. During my sabbatical year, to start in September 2022, I will be joining the International Labour Organization of the United Nations, as a visiting scholar, to work on such topics, within their Social Finance Programme.
I have lived in Liverpool a little over 10 years. I moved here to join the University of Liverpool as a Lecturer in Actuarial Mathematics. Since then, I have brought numerous academics to visit and work with us in Liverpool, celebrated football victories, sang along in the Cavern, visited the Bold street shops and coffee shops, all the while teaching and witnessing many Liverpool students graduating and building their own careers.
I was born in Sibiu, Romania (direct flight now from Liverpool!) and I came to Liverpool to join the University of Liverpool’ Institute in Actuarial and Financial Mathematics, in 2011, right when the Institute was founded.
I am a Club Liverpool ambassador, which is a network of academics, medics and professionals who can influence a conference coming to the city. The team at Club Liverpool offers free support when bidding for and hosting an event and helped us in bring two large mathematics conferences to Liverpool in 2015, PARTY (standing for Perspectives on Actuarial Risks in Talks by Young researchers) and the International Congress on Mathematics: Insurance and Economics.
We also brought another in 2022, the IMA Conference on Mathematics of Finance and Climate Risk. Being part of this initiative, I have met many interesting people at the networking events they hold. I would encourage anyone who is thinking of organizing a conference to get in touch with Club Liverpool.
