The Centre for Risk Studies team

Professor Danny Ralph is a Founder and Academic Director of the Centre for Risk Studies, Professor of Operations Research at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School, and a Fellow of Churchill College. Danny’s research interests include identification and management of systemic risk, risk aversion in investment, economic equilibria models and optimisation methods. Management stress test, via selection and construction of catastrophe scenarios, is one focus of his work in the Centre for Risk Studies. Another is the role and expression of risk management within organisations. Danny engages across scientific and social science academia, a variety of commercial and industrial sectors, and government policy making. He was Editor-in-Chief of Mathematical Programming (Series B) from 2007-2013.

Dr Trevor Maynard is the Director of Systemic Risk at the Cambridge Centre for Risk Studies located at the Judge Business School.

He qualified as an actuary and holds a PhD in Statistics from the LSE and a Masters in Pure Mathematics from the University of Warwick.

His work has involved risk modelling in various guises from Pensions and Life Assurance to general insurance, working for firms such as Lloyd’s of London and Mercer. Whilst at Lloyd’s his team produced risk reports on subjects including Pandemics, Climate Change, Deep tail Marine disasters, Nano Technology, Geopolitics, AI, Robotics and IoT working with many think tanks, universities and specialist risk modelling firms.

Additionally he advises insurtech firms on risk and data science.

Dr Michelle Tuveson is Chairman & Executive Director at the Cambridge Centre for Risk Studies at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School. She brings 20+ years of corporate experience within the technology and consulting sectors to further the development of better risk models for the future. During Dr Tuveson’s tenure, the Cambridge Centre for Risk Studies has become a world leading provider of research and thought leadership in scenario-based modelling of multi-disciplinary risks to society and businesses. Dr Tuveson chairs the Centre’s Advisory Board, leads the Cambridge Chief Risk Officers Council, is a former IEEE Standards Committee Member on the General Ethical Principles for Artificial Intelligence, and former advisory board member to the World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Report. Dr Tuveson has worked in corporations within the technology sector including Lockheed Martin, Booz Allen & Hamilton, and MITRE Corporation. Dr Tuveson’s research topics include risk culture and governance, corporate risk profiling, and the role of the Chief Risk Officer. She is a frequent commentator and speaker and her articles have been published in reports such as Banking & Financial Services Policy Report (Wolters Kluwer) and Financial Times Special Report on Risk Management. She is the director of the advisory board of Elevate City, an organisation aligned with the UK HM Treasury’s Women in Finance Charter. She earned degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, and University of Cambridge.

Jayne is the Administrator at the Centre for Risk Studies and also responsible for assisting in planning, coordinating and support of all Centre events.

Jayne’s background is in both research and administrative roles, and has a BSc (Hons) in Biochemistry and Pharmacology, and a Diploma in Nutritional Consultancy. She has experience in scientific laboratory research (both commercial and University of Cambridge) and as a nutritionist. For 11 years she managed customer services (public and professional), addressed technical queries, and planned and managed all events for a laboratory testing service.

Fernanda is a Research Associate in systemic risks at the Centre for Risk Studies. She is a Mexican engineer focused on the application of technology for development and social innovation. Previously, Fernanda worked on gene and cellular therapies for several years and then transitioned to consulting in technology innovation, disaster risk management (DRM) and emergency preparedness and response (EP&R). Fernanda is also a passionate traditional fencer and martial artist, looking forward to this new opportunity to work on systemic risks at the Cambridge Centre for Risk Studies.

Kevin is a researcher at the Cambridge Centre for Risk Studies. His research looks at climate disaster risk and recovery, systemic economic and climate risk, and global trends, networks, and linkages in the design and analysis of risk taxonomies and scenarios. He has worked in research related to climate financial risk, including input/output analysis of climate-economy modelling, climate scenario modelling and stress testing, carbon accounting, energy systems, and transition and fiscal policy. He has been a researcher at Oxford University’s School of Geography, Department of Economics, and the Said Business School, where he has worked on topics related to international trade, competition, infrastructure, international development, inequality, and long-run growth. He has been a lecturer at Oxford University and the University of Buckingham. He holds a PhD and MSc from Oxford University, and a BA from Northwestern University.

Taha Tariq is the Geopolitical Research Lead for the Centre for Risk Studies. He received his MSc in International Relations with a Distinction from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He has had prior experience in using open-source intelligence analysis to provide political risk advisory services.

Taha’s research spans contemporary issues concerning geopolitics, defence, and security. Within this cluster, Taha has further researched on international strategic conflict, military modernisation programs, public-private armament partnerships, weapons of mass destruction, ideological terrorism, domestic political polarisation, comparative national institution-building, state failure, geoeconomics, and outer space politics.

Steve is a Research Assistant at the Centre for Risk Studies. Hailing from France, Steve holds a Master’s degree in IT for Finance and has garnered hands-on experience at institutions such as Deutsche Börse AG and Kaiko. With a keen interest in leveraging technology for financial development, Steve’s expertise lies in quantitative risk analysis and cryptocurrency product operations

Dr Andrew Coburn manages the External Advisory Board of the Centre for Risk Studies, coordinating the inputs of consumers of research into the Centre’s risk agenda. Andrew is the principal coordinator of the research programme on ‘System Shock’ at the Centre.

Andrew is one of the leading contributors to the creation of the class of catastrophe models that over the past 20 years has come to be an accepted part both of business management in financial services and of public policy making for societal risk. He has extensive experience in developing models and using them for business decision support. Andrew has also provided research inputs into government policy, such as House of Congress legislation on terrorism risk management policy and urban planning for disaster mitigation in Mexico, Metro Manila, and Southern Italy.

Dr Andrew Coburn is a member of the senior management of Risk Management Solutions, the leading provider of catastrophe risk models to the insurance industry.

Andrew Freeman is a risk advisor, NED, investor, and author who has been a Fellow of the Centre since 2012. He currently works as part of the Value Add Team at Vitruvian Partners, advising portfolio companies on practical ways to engage with enterprise risk management. Over a 35-year career he has been a prominent writer and commentator on risk and finance, and a front-line risk manager in the investment industry, notably as Chief Risk Officer of Ardian, one of Europe’s most successful private-equity firms.

Andrew has written numerous articles and books, first as a journalist on The Economist and later in his role as a Senior Knowledge Expert in Risk at McKinsey, where he founded the Working Papers on Risk series. He is the author of ‘What Does Risk Culture Mean to a Corporation? Evidence for business value‘, in Beyond bad apples: risk culture in business (Tuveson, Ralph, Alexander eds. CUP 2020). In 2014 he co-founded Fairer Finance which campaigns for better consumer outcomes in financial services. Andrew has also done extensive pro-bono work as a trustee, school governor and Managing Director of The Finance Foundation, a not-for-profit think tank that was originally part of Demos.

Andrew is a graduate of Balliol College, Oxford and was also elected a Domus Senior Scholar at Merton College, Oxford.

Winston Krone is the Global Managing Director of Kivu Consulting, an international technology firm specializing in the forensic response to cyber-attacks and proactive risk reduction. Winston has supervised hundreds of incidents globally in a 20-year career and has a particular expertise on responding to cyber extortion events. He has advised corporate boards and crisis committees during attacks, working with law enforcement, and providing findings to regulators in both the US and UK. Winston has been retained as a testifying cyber expert in both the US and UK in hacking cases and post-breach class-action litigation.
Winston has over 10 years’ experience working with cyber insurance carriers in North America and Europe on assessing the risk of attacks and developing models for effective technical response. He has extensively presented and published on these subjects, including presenting on cyber extortion negotiations for the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Risk Studies’ Future of Cyber Risk 2019 event.
Prior to joining Kivu, Winston worked as an attorney both in private practice and for the United Nations in Africa and the Former Yugoslavia. He is both an English solicitor and California attorney, and received his law degree from Oxford University, UK. He was appointed a US Federal Master to advise on the secure usage of digital data in a case involving millions of California students. Winston holds patents for a remote analysis and collection tool that has been used in data breaches around the world.

Dr Rainer Sachs is a senior risk researcher and risk management expert.

He is the founder and owner of the Sachs-Institute, a transdisciplinary think tank for better coping with risk and uncertainty. Rainer Sachs’ current research interests focus on modelling complex risks in insurance and human behaviour in decisions under uncertainty. A main objective of his work is the transfer of research results into risk management practices.

Previously he was the head of the Emerging Risks team of Munich Re, developing risk identification and assessment tools for emerging risks, accumulation scenarios and systemic risks.

During his almost 20-year career in the financial industry, he has held various positions in financial and insurance risk management, both in Germany and Australia.

Rainer Sachs holds a PhD in complex systems theory from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich/Max-Planck-Institute for extraterrestrial Physics and a Master in cosmology from the Technical University of Munich/University of Pune (India).

Dimitrios Velmachos is a senior insurance executive and actuary with over 25 years of experience in the UK and internationally. His roles have included advisory positions, as well as serving as chair and member of industry boards and committees. He has held positions at market-leading organizations in the insurance and reinsurance industry such as Global Chief Actuary and Director of Data & Analytics, General Manager, and led the Advanced Analytics and AI proposition for a major consulting practice. He has also been engaged as an independent advisor on a range of projects involving private equity, private and public institutions, with a primary focus on the financial services sector.

Dimitrios has operated in different jurisdictions worldwide, spanning the insurance value chain and covering various business lines including Life, Health, and P&C. He has an extensive track record of transformational leadership, turnarounds in complex environments, value creation and integrating risk with strategy. He has initiated and overseen the development of new capabilities, led major consulting engagements, and re-engineered and de-risked insurance portfolios, transforming capital position and profitability.

Dimitrios has studied Mathematics, published works on actuarial topics, and is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries, a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, and a member of the Health and Care Board of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.

Nick is a qualified accountant and supply chain professional and has held a variety of global financial, procurement and commercial positions in several industry sectors, working for companies such as PWC, BOC Group, The Virgin Group, and Zurich Insurance Group.

He has spoken and written on several topics related to business intelligence and supply chain management. He served on the Board of the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply which is the biggest procurement professional body in the world with over 100,000 members. He also served as a specialist advisor to the World Economic Forum on the topic of systemic supply chain risk and was Chairman of the Supply Chain Risk Leadership Council and still serves on their Board.

From 2008 he led the development and rollout of innovative and multi award winning supply chain risk products for Zurich Insurance Group, which gave him the opportunity to interact with many global companies and understand how they are addressing the real risk issues they are facing in terms of their supply chains and driving business performance.

He set up his own consultancy in 2018, advising in all areas related to procurement and supply chain performance with a focus on supply chain.