Instructors and TAs

Scot Adams, University of Minnesota School of Mathematics   -   Scot Adams is Professor of Mathematics and spent three years as the founding director of the Master of Financial Mathematics Program at the University.

He started his Bachelor's degree at the University of Minnesota, then transferred to Cornell University, finishing in 1978. After working for two years as an actuarial student at Lutheran Brotherhood (now Thrivent), he began graduate studies at the University of Chicago, receiving his PhD in under the direction of Robert J. Zimmer. Prof. Zimmer was instrumental in starting the Financial Mathematics program at Chicago.

After graduate school, Prof. Adams held postdoctoral positions at Stanford University and the University of Chicago, before coming to the University of Minnesota in 1992.

He is married with two children, both boys, who keep him very busy!

Chris Bemis, Whitebox Advisors   -   Chris is a quantitative analyst for Whitebox Advisors, working primarily on equity market modeling outside of the United States. He is also an active researcher for the Whitebox quantitative group, where he works on varied problems in the context of equity, derivative, and fixed income strategies.

Dr. Bemis earned his PhD in applied mathematics from the University of Minnesota. His thesis work involved both modeling and optimization for portfolios of risky assets.

John Dodson, Options Clearing Corporation   -   John is a manager in the quantitative risk management group at the Options Clearing Corporation in Chicago, which is the principal central counterparty for equity derivatives. Previously, John was with the treasury and investment risk management departments of Ameriprise Financial in Minneapolis. Prior to returning to the midwest, John worked for several major international banks in New York, London, and Zurich. He entered the industry out of college with an appointment at the Bank for International Settlements.

In addition to his affiliation with the finanical mathematics program, John has taught about financial derivatives for the Carlson School of Management and for various industry programs.

John has a BS degree in physics and mathematics from Stanford and an MS degree in computational finance from Carnegie Mellon. John's affiliation with the U of M goes back to the 80's. He was an UMTYMP student and also participated in a mentorship program with the head of the physics department during his high school years.

Philip A. Jones, Ameriprise Financial   -   Phil Jones, Vice President of Quantitative Strategies for Ameriprise Financial, has responsibility for the design, development and implementation of financial applications and hedging platforms for the variable annuity living benefit riders within Ameriprise Financial. Phil and his staff are also responsible for the mathematical modeling and programming, platform architecture and data management for the living benefit rider product.

Phil earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Minnesota, with concentrations in Probability. Phil previously earned an M.A. in Mathematics from Oxford University in England. Phil also serves as a fire fighter and Emergency Medical Technician for the Eden Prairie Fire Department, MN.

Blaise Morton, Whitebox Advisors, LLC   -   Dr. Blaise Morton has a Bachelor's Degree in mathematics from Princeton and a Ph. D. degree in mathematics from U.C. Berkeley. He worked in the aerospace industry and in academics from 1980 until 1999, but since the start of 2000 he has worked full time in finance as a quant and trader.

Dr. Morton is currently working as a quant/trader at the hedge fund Whitebox Advisors, LLC. Previous to Whitebox he worked at EBF, Dresdner Bank, DRW and Eagle Capital Management. During his financial career he has led a variety of quantitative research and development projects - computerized trading systems, derivative pricing, spread trading, valuation of convertible bonds, valuation of credit derivatives, stochastic volatility models and volatility forecasting, variance swaps and dispersion trades, real options and barrier options.

These research activities have led to dozens of models, pricing tools and strategies that traders have used over extended periods of time to achieve targeted return on capital subject to specified risk constraints.

Christopher Prouty, Cargill   -   Chris is serving as the instructor for FM 5091/5092: Programming and Presentation in Finance.

Chris began his financial career as a research assistant at the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis. Since graduating from the University of Minnesota with a B.S. in Applied Economics, Chris has worked in commodities and insurance, in roles focusing on trading and risk management through derivative strategies. Chris currently works for Cargill, where he is an exotic derivatives trader. During college and shortly thereafter Chris operated a small software consulting firm, CP Consulting. He has completed freelance software development projects for Twin Cities firms, including the University of Minnesota Foundation and ACR ATI, a firm which offers employee testing services to the health care industry.

Arkady Shemyakin Arkady Shemyakin has a M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Novosibirsk State University and Sobolev Institute of Mathematics, Russian Academy of Sciences. He worked in Russia prior to 1993, when he moved to the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.

His field is mathematical and statistical methods in applications to finance, insurance, and engineering. He teaches classes in evening programs at the U of M since 2006. Arkady also does research and consulting, most recently in the fields of Bayesian statistical analysis, copula models, and Markov chain Monte Carlo.

Carlos Tolmasky, Cargill   -   Carlos Tolmasky is a derivatives trader at Cargill Petroleum. He joined Cargill in 1996 as a member of their Research Group focusing on the development and implementation of derivatives models for fixed income and commodities markets. He later joined the petroleum group as a "desk quant" and, more recently, as a derivatives/relative value trader.

The author of various papers in financial journals, Dr. Tolmasky holds an undergraduate degree (Licenciado) from the University of Buenos Aires and a PhD in mathematics from the University of Washington.

Jason Vinar, Ameriprise Financial   -   Jason Vinar is a Financial Engineer at Ameriprise Financial in the Quantitative Strategies Group. He works in a team involved in the design, development and implementation of financial applications and hedging platforms for the variable annuity living benefit riders within Ameriprise Financial. He is also involved in mathematical modeling and programming, platform architecture and data management for the living benefit rider product. Previously Mr. Vinar was a Partner at Castle Peak Capital Advisors where he was responsible for model development and implementation for residential mortgage related products. He was also an Analytics Manager for the PIA unit at GMAC-ResCap. In this capacity he was responsible for managing the trading analytics and risk management functions of the PIA. Prior to that, he was Project Lead/Lead Developer for Financial Engineering projects in the Risk and Value Analytics group of GMAC-ResCap. Jason holds a Master's degree in Financial Mathematics from the University of Minnesota and Bachelor's degrees, in Mathematics and Economics, from the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire.