Notes from the E&R Chair

By Liang (Jason) Hong

Expanding Horizons, April 2022

I am excited to be serving as the chairperson of the Education and Research (E&R) Council this year. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the outgoing chair, Runhuan Feng, for leading the council last year. Runhuan came up with the initial idea of the SOA Early Career Award, working tirelessly—and eventually successfully—to persuade the council as well as the SOA leadership to create it. I am also grateful to outgoing member Tianyang Wang for all his efforts last year as the co-vice-chairperson and the editor of Expanding Horizons; he has very kindly agreed to stay on in the latter capacity. Thanks should also go to outgoing council member Diana Skryzdlo for her valuable contributions to the council and her lasting support as a council friend.

Last November, the council welcomed three highly experienced new members: Tim Luedtke, Stefanos Orfanos and Peng Shi. They possess impressive track records in research, teaching and service, and they have already been very active in council activities. I couldn’t be more certain that our council will continue to accomplish great things in the future.

Thanks to the tremendous efforts of co-vice-chair Hal Pedersen and council member Jean-Thomas Baillargeon, the council successfully sponsored two webcasts last year: one professionalism town hall (August 2021), sponsored jointly with the Investment Section, and one entitled “Rethinking Actuarial Representations Used in Machine Learning” (October 2021).

The 57th Actuarial Research Conference (currently planned as in-person) will take place August 3–6, 2022, on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. There will be a team ceremony and a tour of the gardens at Japan House as well as a conference dinner. More and updated information can be found at https://publish.illinois.edu/arconf2022/.

Thanks to the thorough and meticulous work of our treasurer, Jeffrey Zheng, the council continues to maintain its financial health. We plan to sponsor events interesting to our members such as the SOA’s annual ImpACT Conference and the SOA Health Meeting. Co-vice-chair Russell Hendel and council member Charles Fuhrer are leading these initiatives with unmatchable enthusiasm.

Finally, I would like to invite you to join the council’s LinkedIn Page to keep yourself updated on council news and get in touch with other council members. I look forward to working all of you this year.

Liang (Jason) Hong, PhD, FSA, is an associate professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas. He can be reached at liang.hong@utdallas.edu.