James Harmon, director of data science over the Risk Analytics Reserving Modeling Team at Liberty Mutual, has joined Rice University's Department of Statistics as a lecturer in advanced statistical methods, regression, and linear models.
The Department of Statistics is the academic home of the Center for Computational Finance and Economic Systems (CoFES).
Harmon is an experienced instructor with over 20 years of combined experience in actuarial science, property and casualty insurance risk management, pedagogy and instructional design at multiple education levels.
At Liberty Mutual, Harmon directs the team's application of advanced analytic techniques and emerging technologies to predict loss and loss adjustment expenses through new data sources, tools, analytics, and advanced modeling techniques.
Between his two tenures as a director and assistant director at Liberty Mutual, Harmon designed and taught technical and non-technical courses for Apple in data analysis and machine learning for two years.
Harmon earned his doctorate in statistics from the University of Washington in 2015, where he was also a lecturer for the university's Master of Data Science Program. During this time, he also taught introductory econometrics classes at Seattle University.
Harmon has a B.S. in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Following graduation in 1998, he moved to Seattle and began his career as an Actuarial Associate with Safeco Insurance from 2002 to 2006. After this role, he fostered his passion for teaching, working as an instructor at the University of Maryland University College in Wiesbaden, Germany, and as a middle school and high school mathematics teacher at the Frankfurt International School in Frankfurt/Oberursel, Germany, and at the Northwest School in Seattle, WA.
- Shawn Hutchins, Communications and Marketing Specialist
