The Louis Bachelier prize of the Natixis foundation rewards a researcher, under 45, for her contribution to mathematical modeling in finance, insurance, risk management and scientific computing, including machine learning and artificial intelligence, applied to finance and insurance.

Pauline Barrieu is Professor in statistics at the LSE (London School of Economics and Political Science) where she is the Head of the Department of Statistics and co-director of the Centre for the Analysis of Time Series (CATS).

Pauline’s contribution is important because, over her career as a statistician and actuary, she has addressed many problems that command the attention of the world today: climate science, flood insurance, catastrophe risk, longevity risk, and many aspects of financial risk. Her work often focuses on how we address model risk, uncertainty – and risk sharing under uncertainty.

“Pauline’s international recognition is well established both in academia and in the financial industry. Pauline’s work offers a great example of what quantitative finance can bring to risk management of financial institutions and the design of optimal regulation for the banking and insurance industries. Pauline has brought fresh and original thinking to challenging problems for both the academic and practitioners’ communities“, explained Michel Crouhy – Chairman of the Scientific Committee of the Natixis Foundation.

“Pauline is a role model for our young quants in so many ways. Her work offers a great example of how quantitative finance and its techniques can help solve practical problems. She believes in a multi-disciplinary approach. Most importantly, her work addresses one of the central questions of our time: How do we cope with the great uncertainties of our world and approach them in ways that lead to the best possible outcome?” says Jean Cheval – President of the Natixis Foundation.

The Natixis Foundation for Research and Innovation was founded in 2006. It acts as a driving force to encourage research in the broad field of mathematical finance, including capital markets, actuarial finance and insurance, quantitative asset management, risk management, and – a recent addition –data sciences. In addition to the Louis Bachelier prize, the Natixis Foundation awards a prize for the best Master thesis in Mathematical Finance, and finances doctoral students and special events in the field of mathematical finance.