Part of the Words on Monday series
Speakers
Tim Johnson
John Browning
Terri Duhon
Chair
Ehsan Masood
The 1980s saw the rise of the ‘rocket scientists' of finance - as engineers, mathematicians and physicists rejected careers in science and technology and instead opted to work for banks. What part did they play in the financial crisis? And what is the future of science in finance? Join leading experts from science and banking as they debate whether the crisis was the result of bankers and regulators failing to grasp complicated, expert knowledge; and whether scientific knowledge - in particular fields such as complex systems, ecological economics and human behaviour - could help to ensure that economies are better understood and better regulated.
Biographies
Tim Johnson is the UK Research Council's Academic Fellow in Financial Mathematics based at Heriot-Watt University and the Maxwell Institute for Mathematical Sciences. His main research interests are in optimal stochastic control. He completed his PhD thesis in The Optimal Timing of Investment at King's College London in November 2006. He has a BSc in physics from Imperial College and worked in the energy industry for 16 years before undertaking his PhD. As an academic fellow, he undertakes a range of public engagement activities, ranging from drafting submissions to government to talking to school students.
John Browning is a researcher, entrepreneur and journalist. He is a research associate at Moscow School of Management, Skolkovo, where he looks into prospects for "smart infrastructure", including electronic markets and payment systems. As a frelance journalist, he has written for Nature, The Economist, Scientific American and the Wall Street Journal. He is also chairman of Australian Oil-Shale Holdings, a small Australian energy company. In previous incarnations, John spent 12 years at The Economist writing about business economics and technology. He was European editor of Wired at its founding and became executive editor of the first two, sadly unsuccessful, versions of Wired UK. He has consulted on technology strategy with McKinsey & Co, CSC Index and Monitor Group. He was a co-founder of First Tuesday, a boom 1.0 networking forum for entrepreneurs that was sold in 2001. John has degrees in history (UC Berkeley) and computer science (University of London) and lives in London.
Terri Duhon is the Managing Partner of B&B Structured Finance, a company based in London and New York that provides advice and training to the banking industry across financial products, with a particular expertise in derivatives and structured products. A mathematics graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology she has 15 years of experience in structuring and trading derivatives products. Much of this experience was with J. P. Morgan where her team is widely regarded as playing a pioneering role in the worldwide adoption of credit derivatives products by banks. In 2002 she moved to ABN Amro and then set up B&B Structured Finance two years later in 2004.
Ehsan Masood is a science journalist and a consulting Editor of Nature. He also teaches international science policy to journalism students at Imperial College London and is a trustee of Leadership for Environment and Development. He is a regular panellist on Home Planet on BBC Radio 4 and his books include Science and Islam: A History (Icon, 2009), and Dry: Life Without Water (Harvard, 2006)
Choose where you would like to sit. Use our seating plan to choose your price and seat.
Date: Monday 21 September
Time: 19:00
Venue: Hall One
Please note that online booking closes 90 minutes prior to the start of the performance.
