The Center for Computational Finance and Economic Systems (CoFES) at Rice University is dedicated to the advancement of quantitative finance and economic systems and their ultimate impact on society. Using modern computational, statistical, and mathematical techniques to model complex problems, we strive to deliver world-class research, expand education, and advance public knowledge.
CoFES regularly hosts guest lectures and sponsors cross-disciplinary conferences and workshops, providing students with a range of knowledge from employers and researchers in the financial services sector, as well as experts in statistical analysis, quantitative finance, investment banking, private equity, insurance risk management, and data science.
September-October 2025
Emma Zohner, an investment-focused data scientist and quantitative researcher who has extensive expertise in sustainable finance and portfolio analytics, was a CoFES guest lecturer on October 21.
In her role at Fidelity Investments, Zohner develops models that integrate alternative data and generative AI into sustainable investment research.
Previously, Zohner served as the head of data science at Engine No. 1, where she built large-scale predictive modeling systems. In addition to her industry work, she is an adjunct professor at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business, where she co-developed an Artificial Intelligence for Business course.
Zohner holds a doctorate in statistics from Rice, as well as advanced degrees in mathematics and financial engineering. Her work has been recognized with fellowships and awards, including the 2017 Intel/ACM Data and Computational Science Fellowship, the 2020 Ken Kennedy Institute Fellowship and the 2021 James R. Thompson Award from the Department of Statistics.
From September through October, Kerry Back, Rice’s J. Howard Creekmore Professor of Finance and Professor of Economics, organized the Malamud Lectures. Students and faculty in finance, statistics, computer science, economics, and related disciplines attended a series of seven lectures on the Foundations of Big Data and Machine Learning in Finance, Statistics, and Beyond.
Semyon Malamud, senior chair of the Swiss Finance Institute, an associate professor at EPFL, and a research fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Research, shared his knowledge of machine learning applications in investment management.
Malamud has collaborated with Bryan Kelly, the Frederick Frank and Mary C. Tanner Professor at Yale and Head of Machine Learning at AQR Capital Management, to complete path-breaking theoretical and empirical work on the virtues of complex models for understanding asset returns.
Event sponsors included the Creative Ventures Fund of Rice’s Office of Research, and the Jones Graduate School of Business, CoFES, and the Departments of Computer Science and Economics.
December 2025
The Statistical Methods in Finance Conference and Workshop (StatFin2025), hosted by the Chennai Mathematical Institute (CMI), Chennai, India, featured a range of topics in financial modeling, risk, and resilience in a changing world.
This was the tenth Statistical Methods in Finance Conference and Workshop, and the journal Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry (ASMBI) announced that it is dedicating a special issue on "Financial Modeling, Risk, and Resilience in a Changing World" to the topical areas featured at StatFin2025.
Katherine Ensor, Rice's Noah G. Harding Professor of Statistics and CoFES Director, was one of three keynote speakers, and Michael Jackson, Director of Rice’s Professional Master of Statistics (MSTAT) Program and statistics and CoFES Lecturer, is one of 14 invited lecturers at the conference. Rice statistics student Meredith Clayton Kruse was selected to present her doctoral research on exploring statistical methods for large-scale temporal modeling in portfolio fund management and for assessing insurance volatility.
The conference was organized and sponsored by the Chennai Mathematical Institute (CMI), AlgoLabs, CoFES, and the International Society for Business and Industrial Statistics (ISBIS).
February 2026
The Consortium for Enhancing Resilience and Catastrophe Modeling (CERcat) is hosting its first CERCat Semi-Annual Meeting with the Industrial Advisory Board on February 5–6, 2026, at Rice. CoFES is co-sponsoring the student poster competition at the event.
In 2025, Rice and Lehigh University launched CERCat, a national hub uniting university researchers with experts from the insurance, reinsurance, and engineering consulting sectors.
CERCat brings together 18 interdisciplinary faculty experts from fields spanning civil engineering, statistics, Earth sciences, mathematics, computer science, social sciences and public policy. The consortium engages students and postdoctoral fellows, fostering the next generation of leaders in risk and resilience.
For over two decades, CoFES has collaborated with many academic and industry partners to develop prominent research pipelines and provide students with simulated training environments, networking opportunities, externships/internships, and real-world projects where they can apply their computational, statistical and mathematical techniques to understand the health of an economy and its market environments.
- Shawn Hutchins, Communications and Marketing Specialist
