“For me, our department research seminars are the perfect way to connect intellectually and socially with colleagues and students both at Wisconsin and elsewhere,” reflected Risk and Insurance Assistant Professor Anita Mukherjee. “The sharing of ideas always encourages new thinking and provides positive challenges to our research.”
Anita has been planning the seminar series for years, and she is preparing it in a virtual format this year because of the pandemic. Though we cannot connect in-person, we are thrilled that the technology is available to both serve and benefit from national and global participation.
The virtual format allows us the benefit of bringing together former students, practitioners, and researchers who are not in Madison. The department nominates and selects only a handful of scholar presenters to invite each semester, and fortunately, each has been eager to share their research.
The topics covered by the speakers reflect the large scope of research underway in the Risk and Insurance Department including cutting-edge statistical methods for causal inference, data visualization, data privacy and regulation in auto insurance, and large-scale randomized field experiments on health interventions. Recent speakers have included Professor Wesley Yin from UCLA, Professor Katherine Milkman from The Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania, and Christophe Dutang from Université Paris at Dauphine.
A speaker’s virtual visit includes one-on-one and small group meetings with faculty and students, which helps re-create the personal element we miss so much from face-to-face visits. The seminars themselves are moderated by a department faculty member close to the speaker’s area of research. Seminar participants are encouraged to ask questions and provide feedback on the scholar’s research, and this informal back-and-forth makes each presentation a productive and unique learning experience.
We are looking forward to many other timely and interesting seminars as we continue virtually throughout the fall 2020 and spring 2021 semesters.
All seminars are on Fridays; questions and discussion are encouraged. Review the speakers and register here. Contact Anita Mukherjee (anita.mukherjee@wisc.edu) with questions.
Assistant Professor Anita Mukherjee, Michael E. Lehman Distinguished Chair for Inspired Learning in Business, teaches business analytics. Her research interests include insurance markets, law and economics, developmental economics, and psychology and economics.
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