Edward Furman

About me

Dr. Edward Furman is a Professor at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at York University, where he is leading the Actuarial Science Program. He is also Founding Director of the Risk and Insurance Studies Centre (RISC), an institutional interdisciplinary Organized Research Unit that pursues a holistic approach to researching the notion of insurance risk and the topics related to it. Dr. Furman holds a Masters Degree in Actuarial Science (with distinction) as well as a Ph.D. (Summa Cum Laude) in Probability Theory and Mathematical Statistics, both from the University of Haifa, Israel.

Dr. Furman’s research interests lie in distribution theory (e.g., dependence modeling, sums of random variables, factor models, measures of dependence); risk measurement (e.g., risk measures, risk capital allocations); insurance and economic pricing. Two of his papers in Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, co-authored with Ricardas Zitikis and Alexandru Asimit, Qihe Tang, Raluca Vernic won the prestigious Fortis Chair Best Paper Prize granted by the K. U. Leuven, Belgium. Dr. Furman’s research has been funded by, e.g., the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Society of Actuaries, Casualty Actuarial Society.

Dr. Furman has served multiple times as an external consultant for the Central Bureau of Statistics (Israel), Ministry of Finance (Israel), Society of Actuaries (U.S.), Casualty Actuarial Society (U.S.). He is a Fellow of the Science Leadership Program of the University of Toronto and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Statistical Distributions and Applications (Springer).

Research Interests

My current research interests are: (I have published in these areas)

1. Actuarial Science: Multivariate families of distributions applied to financial risk measurement, risk measures, risk decomposition techniques, premium principles;

2. Probability Theory;

3. Multivariate Analysis;

4. Inequalities involving special functions;

5. Database and expert systems applications.Search site search button

Research Areas