MCFAM People in the News
New MFM Instructors in 2021-2022
In the fall of 2021 MCFAM added two new members to its MFM teaching team. Dr. Jing Wang joined the program as an MFM instructor. He is no stranger to the School of Mathematics as he completed his PhD in the department and has been a quant in the Twin Cities for many years. Hartmut Durchschlag also joined the teaching team in the fall of 2021. Hartmut is an alumnus of the MFM program and has been a longtime industry practitioner collaborator as well.
Two new MFM instructors will be joining the program in the fall of 2022.
Both are MCFAM alumni and local industry practitioners. Robert Schell, MFM alumnus will teach the “Current Events in Finance” seminar course next fall and Ben Carter, Actuarial and MFM program alumnus will teach one of the Financial Modeling courses in the MFM program's 3 course sequence.
Dr. Carlos Tolmasky and Laurie Derechin leaving MCFAM
Both Carlos Tolmasky and Laurie Derechin have had major impacts on MCFAM.
Carlos was one of the industry founders of the MFM program which started back in 2007. Beforehand, while building his career as a quant and petroleum trader, he also taught in the School of Mathematics for many years. Carlos looks back on his 22 years of teaching as rewarding and very stimulating. “The opportunity to have introduced mathematical finance to so many students over the years has been a pleasure. We all learned together as we faced different market scenarios that we analyzed in class over the years. As well, the friendships and bonds I have built with so many of the MFM instructors, visiting professors and MCFAM leadership will live on, and remain very important to me.”
Laurie Derechin, MCFAM’s Executive Director is retiring after 45 years in a varied professional career. She came to the School of Mathematics 12 years ago and helped found MCFAM in partnership with Dr. Rina Ashkenazi, MCFAM’s Academic Director. “It has been an honor to close out the last part of my career here at the University. I started my working life as a teacher in Barcelona, Spain, leveraged my teaching skills and MBA as a leader in industry and got to bring it all back together here at MCFAM. With startups and being a “connector” in my background, we built relationships with so many students, alumni, faculty, industry practitioners and academics locally and around the globe that remain a central part of what MCFAM is today. I also had the privilege to help many of my former students find their way to satisfying and meaningful careers. It is the people that matter in the end. One of my joys has always been getting things done with great people. I was able to do that one last time with Rina and the entire team through the creation of MCFAM. “