Cass PhD candidate wins Dimitris N. Chorafas Foundation Award
Cass Business School PhD candidate Senren Tan has been awarded a Dimitris N. Chorafas Foundation Award for his thesis ‘Boundary-Crossing Probabilities for Stochastic Processes and their Applications’.
Senren, a final year PhD student in Actuarial Science under the supervision of Dr Dimitrina Dimitrova, Senior Lecturer in Actuarial Science and Professor Vladimir Kaishev, Professor of Actuarial Science, developed a new methodology for evaluating probabilities with applications in statistics, actuarial science, operations research and finance.
The methodology can be applied to a range of practical problems, including testing of how good statistical models fit the data, assessing the liquidity and solvency of insurance companies, profit maximisation in queuing systems and inventory management or pricing of barrier options in finance. The method enhances the use of the renowned Kolmogorov-Smirnov goodness-of-fit test, implemented in the open source R package KSgeneral.
The Dimitris N. Chorafas Foundation Awards recognise outstanding work in selected fields of engineering sciences, medicine and the natural sciences. They reward research characterised by high potential for practical application and significance of its findings.
Speaking about his Success, Senren said:
“It is really exciting to receive this award, not least because one of the main selection criteria is the extent to which research benefits humanity. Our research is both rigorously theoretical and highly applicable in real-life, so it’s great to be recognised by the academic community in this way.”
Senren’s research supervisors also shared their pride. Dr Dimitrova said:
“This accolade is recognition of Senren’s excellent research and should encourage him to pursue an academic career. The award itself is very prestigious and puts Cass right among other world-renowned institutions, demonstrating the quality of our PhD programmes.”
Senren acknowledged the major role that his supervisors have played in helping him to develop his research ideas and skills throughout the course of his PhD programme:
“Professor Kaishev and Dr Dimitrova have both been really supportive. Alongside their considerable knowledge of my research topic, they have taught me that undertaking academic research is not only about developing theories correctly but also being able to communicate them to others in a clear way that makes them applicable to a wider community.”
Senren is the latest recipient of an award that has also been recently won by Silvana Pesenti in 2018 and Anran Chen in 2017. He has now submitted the thesis after passing his viva without any corrections.
Read more about the PhD in Actuarial Sciences programme at Cass.