Best Graduate Student Presenters at 43rd ARC

Best Graduate Student Presenters at 43rd ARC

By Tom Edwalds

 

For the past few years, the Education and Research Section Council and The Committee on Knowledge Extension Research (CKER) have awarded prizes for the best presentations at the Actuarial Research Conference. This year, the Council decided to award prizes for the five best presentations given by graduate students. Three judges (Claire Bilodeau, Tom Edwalds and Stuart Klugman) rated each of the graduate students in nine categories, including the flow of the presentation (introduction, body and conclusion), the delivery (voice, body language, ability to reach a diverse audience, and staying within the time limit), the slides, and the relevance of the research. The presentations rated the best by the judges were:

1. Brian Hartman, Texas A&M University, "Assessing Regime Uncertainty through Reversible Jump MCMC"
2. Claymore Marshall, University of Waterloo, "Risk–Neutral Valuation of a Guaranteed Minimum Income Benefit Rider Offered in Practice"
3. Harald Dornheim, University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee, "Robust and Efficient Methods for Credibility when Claims Are Approximately Gamma–Distributed"
4. Ya Fang Wang, Concordia University, "The Distribution of Discounted Compound Renewal Sums"
5. Jun Zhou, Concordia University, "Generalized Linear Models in Loss Reserving"

The quality of these presentations showed that these Ph.D. candidates are striving for excellence not only in their research and technical skills, but in their communication skills as well. The council awards the prizes to raise awareness of the importance of communication skills for even the most technically skilled actuarial candidates, whether they will pursue careers in academia or industry. Congratulations to all of these prize winners!