The IRisk Internal Team
Dedicated and motivated to foster industry-academic collaboration and nurture students’ curiosity.
Faculty Members
Runhuan Feng
Professor & Director of Actuarial Science – University of Illinois
Co-Founder of IRisk Lab
Runhuan Feng, FSA, CERA, is a Professor, the Director of Actuarial Science, the State Farm Companies Foundation Scholar in Actuarial Science and a Helen Corley Petit Professorial Scholar at the University of Illinois. He has a wide spectrum of research interests in mathematics and economics of risk and uncertainty in the financial world. He has published extensively on top-tier actuarial and quantitative finance journals. He is an Associate Editor of North American Actuarial Journal, Methodology and Computing in Applied Probability, and Quantitative Finance and Economics. As an applied scientist, Runhuan strongly believes that most interesting research problems are discovered in response to the changing needs of the industry and the society. He co-founded the Illinois Risk Lab, which facilitates research activities that integrate experiential learning for Illinois students and address industrial problems. Runhuan’s research has been recognized in the practitioners’ community through his applied technical contributions and presentations as invited speakers at industry conferences. He is also a frequent consultant to professional organizations, non-profit organizations and start-ups.
Xiaochen Jing
Assistant Professor of Actuarial Science – University of Illinois
Xiaochen Jing is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Mathematics of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a Ph.D. in Actuarial Science, Risk Management & Insurance. He also completed his Master’s degree in Actuarial Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is interested in a variety of research topics including actuarial pricing, life insurance product innovation, textual analysis, machine learning, and risk management & insurance.
Zhiyu (Frank) Quan
Assistant Professor of Actuarial Science – University of Illinois
Zhiyu (Frank) Quan is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Mathematics of the University of Illinois. Before joining Illinois, he worked for a cutting-edge Insurtech company as an R & D data scientist developing data-driven solutions to major insurance companies. He holds a Ph.D. in Actuarial Science from the University of Connecticut. He has a broad spectrum of research interests in data science applications in insurance: tree-based models, natural language processing, deep learning.
Richard Sowers
Professor of ISE & Mathematics – University of Illinois
Richard Sowers is a Professor of the University of Illinois. He is appointed in the Department of Industrial and enterprise Systems Engineering, the Deparment of Mathematics and the Department of Statistics. He holds a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Maryland. His interests are in various applied problems which have impact. His formal training is in electrical engineering and applied mathematics. “I find that some of the more interesting problems I have worked on have come from looking at the real world with a strongly quantitative toolset. Along the way, I have spent time at a hedge fund and consulted for private industry and the U.S. Government. Finally, at the moment I am the associate head for undergraduate studies in the department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering.”
Graduate Supervisor
Panyi Dong
Ph.D. Student in Mathematics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Panyi Dong is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Mathematics with concentration in Actuarial Science and Risk Analytics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Before he joined the doctoral program, he obtained a master degree in Actuarial Science and Risk Management at UIUC. He has participated in IRisk Lab Automated Machine Learning project during Fall 2021 and has been supervising IRisk projects since then. His research focuses on innovations of Machine Learning and Data Science in Insurance.
Changyue Hu
Ph.D. Student in Mathematics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Changyue Hu is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with a concentration in Actuarial Science and Risk Analytics. Prior to joining the doctoral program, she obtained her Master’s degree in Actuarial Science at the University of Illinois and her Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics at Nankai University. Her research interests lie in machine learning applications in actuarial science, especially with tree-based models. She has been a graduate supervisor of several InsurTech-related research projects in IRisk Lab since Spring 2021.
Yuxuan Li
Ph.D. student in Mathematics at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Yuxuan Li is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Before joining Illinois, he obtained a Master’s degree in Financial Engineering from Cornell University. His research focuses on machine learning, in particular reinforcement learning, applied to the actuarial and financial context. He has been supervising the machine-learning-related projects in the IRisk Lab since Spring 2021.
Yulong Wu
Ph.D. student in Mathematics at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Yulong Wu is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with a concentration in Actuarial Science and Risk Analytics. Prior to joining the doctoral program, he obtained his Master’s degree in Mathematics at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor with a concentration in Actuarial Science and his Bachelor’s degree in Economics at the Central University of Finance and Economics with a concentration in Actuarial Science. His current research interests lie in Decentralised Finance, especially the Decentralised Insurance. He is looking to carry the research idea of decentralisation to the asset valuation field after. He has been a graduate supervisor of several financial trading algorithm and decentralised insurance projects in IRisk Lab since Spring 2021.
Linfeng Zhang
Ph.D. Student in Mathematics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Linfeng Zhang is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His concentration is in Actuarial Science and Risk Analytics. Before he joined the doctoral program, he worked at the Critical Infrastructure Resilience Institute (CIRI) as a research assistant on various topics on cyber risks and cyber insurance. With his work and research experience in this field, he has been supervising IRisk Lab projects related to cyber since Fall 2019. Additionally, he has been working with Professor Alfred Chong and Professor Runhuan Feng on several cutting-edge topics including pandemic risks and lifecycle planning and has been supervising student projects on those topics in the IRisk Lab.