RiskEcon® Lab for Decision Metrics @ Courant Institute

Dr. David K. A. Mordecai is a Visiting Scholar at Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences NYU, serving in the capacity of an investigator leading research activities at RiskEcon^® Lab for Decision Metrics @ Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences NYU, an industrial lab established in 2011 and co-located at Courant for the development of experimental testbeds and analytics that employ high-dimensional datasets from innovative sources, by applying a range of computational and analytical methods to commercial and industrial sensor networks and edge computing embedded systems, focusing primarily on research and development (R&D) of remote and compressed sensing, anomaly detection, forensic analytics and statistical process control.

In 2010, David was invited to become a Fellow and a member of the Advisory Board of the Mathematical Finance program at Courant, subsequent to serving as a guest lecturer for the program since 2006. From 2012 to 2015, he held a joint appointment at Stern Graduate School of Business, as a Senior Research Scholar for Computational Economics of Commerce, Law and Geo-Politics. He has served as an adjunct instructor of applied mathematics at Courant, as well as an Adjunct Professor and an active member of the working group for the NYU Center for Data Science (NYUCDS) at its inception. He mentors students across various NYU divisions, including Courant, NYUCDS, Stern, Tisch ITP (Interactive Telecommunications Masters Program) and NYU Tandon School of Engineering. In 2014, he was appointed Course Director leading the NYUCDS Capstone graduate applied research program in its inaugural year. He is also associated with the NYU Social Media and Political Participation Lab (SMaPP), an interdisciplinary collaboration that researches the relationships between social media and political behavior.

Dr. Mordecai is an Adjunct Professor of Econometrics and Statistics at University of Chicago Booth School of Business, periodically teaching Financing the Grid: Valuing Transmission and Storage Capacity, an interdisciplinary graduate course with a primary focus on real options and relative-value analysis of electricity markets. As an Adjunct Professor of Law at NYU Law School, he also co-teaches the course Quantitative Methods in Litigation with a focus on machine testimony and machine behavior. His contributions to this course as co-instructor include extensive direct experience with technical review, evaluation, and testing of AI and machine learning applications across diverse institutional contexts, as well as industry and market settings.

David earned a Ph.D. with concentrations in Econometrics/ Mathematical Statistics and Economics/ Industrial Organization from the University of Chicago, and an M.B.A. in Finance from NYU Stern School of Business. His dissertation research applied principal components analysis to risk-based leverage estimation with a focus on empirical tests of the limits of arbitrage, and how market shocks trigger contagion via the financing of highly leveraged financial institutions during periods of extreme market volatility. In addition to studying financial economics and market microstructure, as well as the economics of law, regulation and industry structure, his doctoral education included the study of Bayesian decision theory, social network analysis and behavioral economics.

Since 2013, he has served as the first Scientist-in-Residence at FinTech Innovation Lab, an accelerator platform for early and growth stage technology firms, organized by The Partnership Fund for New York City in conjunction with Accenture and a consortium of venture capital firms and global financial institutions.

He currently serves as Chair of the Nanotechnology Committee, Co-Chair of the Space Law Committee and Vice-Chair of the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Committee for the American Bar Association Science & Technology Law Section. He was appointed as a technical advisor to the Uniform Law Commission Study Committee on Event Data Recorders in Cars, which studies the need for and feasibility of uniform or model state legislation concerning event data recorders and generated vehicle data. In 2020, he was also appointed as a technical advisor to the Uniform Law Commission Study Committee on Mitigation of Public Health Emergency Business Disruptions.

David is Co-Founder and Co-Managing Member of Numerati^® Partners LLC, which coordinates a data analytics and technology development ecosystem, with the mission of advancing and fostering the next generation of scalable data-intensive risk and liability management enterprises. The firm provides resources fundamental to advancing the development of nascent leading-edge inferential surveillance, monitoring, and predictive analytics technologies for deployment within the RiskTech domain: risk technologies associated with adaptive distributed, networked and embedded systems such as remote sensing, agent-oriented data analytics, computing and control systems. David is also co-founder of New York City based advisory firm, Risk Economics, Inc., founded in 1998, which specializes in the application of computational economics to the proprietary development and scalable implementation of robust modeling and data analytic frameworks for valuation, strategic and systemic risk analysis, and dynamic asset-liability management.

During his 30 year tenure in the financial services industry, David has served as a Managing Director at Swiss Re, where he led Relative-Value Market Strategies, a quantitative economics and financial engineering function with the global mandate to develop firm-wide and industry standards, benchmarks and frameworks for the valuation and trading of exposures underlying long-dated life, health, medical and pension liabilities as well as geopolitical risk. Prior to this, he served as Senior Advisor to the Head of Swiss Re Financial Services.

Previously, David was Managing Director of Structured Products, responsible for $5 billion of CDO assets, at a multi-strategy hedge fund with $10 billion of assets under management (AUM). Prior to his role as a hedge fund manager, he was Vice President of Financial Engineering/Principal Finance at AIG, and a Director at the rating agency Fitch. During the first decade of his career, he specialized in credit analysis and the origination, structuring, and trading of leveraged loans for non-recourse project finance and highly leveraged transactions involving corporations and financial institutions.

David has served as an advisor on systemic risk issues to the Federal Reserve, the International Monetary Fund, the US Treasury, and the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). He has also served as an advisor on hedge fund valuation issues to the International Organization of Securities Commissions. He co-authored the second working paper published by the Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Research, entitled  Forging Best Practices in Risk Management. He has also been a member of the Investment Advisory Committee of the New York Mercantile Exchange. David is the founding Co-chair of the International Association of Financial Engineers’ Liquidity Risk Committee, and has actively served on the Steering Committee of the IAFE Investor Risk Working Group on hedge fund and CTA disclosure issues, as well as the Advisory Board.  /David was the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Risk Finance, a quarterly peer-reviewed research periodical, which addresses topics in financial risk intermediation. He remains a senior member of the journal’s Advisory Board subsequent to its sale by the original publishers Euromoney Institutional Investor to Emerald Publications. He has published numerous articles on topics including hedge fund strategies, structured credit, and weather and insurance derivatives. He has also served on the Advisory Committee for Chartered Alternative Investment Analysts Association, and on the editorial board of the Journal of Alternative Investments. In addition, he has been a guest lecturer at Columbia University, at the Graduate Business School, the Engineering/Operations Research Division, as well as the School for International and Public Affairs.

In 2016, David was elected to the Board of Governors of New York Academy of Sciences, a membership organization founded in 1817 with over 20,000 members, including research scientists at universities and industry, as well as representatives of business, government, and policy organizations, in 100 countries. From 2013 to 2024, he served as a member of the leadership council of Black Rock Forest Consortium, a 4,000-acre natural living laboratory for field-based scientific research and education, operated by a consortium of twenty-three colleges and universities, public and independent schools, and scientific and cultural institutions, and also served on the BRFC carbon sequestration advisory committee. From 2009 to 2015, he served as a member of the Board of Directors of Scenic Hudson, one of the nation’s three largest conservation organizations, and during his second term, co-chaired their Science Committee. In addition, he served on the Board of Directors of Hudson Highlands Land Trust from 2007 to 2016.

His biography has been published in the Marquis publications Who’s Who in the World, Who’s Who in America, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business