The Executive Committee of Tsinghua SEM decided on March 25, 2013 to confer the title of Zurich Insurance Group Chair Professorship on Professor Michael R. Powers.

Tsinghua SEM now has ten professors with chaired professorship. Besides Professor Michael Powers, the other nine professors are Mansfield Freeman Professor BAI Chong-en, EMC Professor CHEN Guoqing, Lenovo Professor CHEN Jian, Mansfield Freeman Professor LI Daokui, C. V. Starr Professor LI Hongbin, CCB Professor WEN Yi, COSCO Professor YANG Baiyin, CCB Professor WANG Ruqu and Tsinghua Tongfang Professor WEI Jie.

Professor Powers is currently interim chair of the Department of Finance, Tsinghua SEM. He also is chief editor of both the Journal of Risk Finance and the Asia-Pacific Journal of Risk and Insurance, and a recipient of China’s Thousand Talents (Qian Ren Ji Hua) award. His recent book, Acts of God and Man: Ruminations on Risk and Insurance (2011, Columbia University Press) presents his ideas on developing a “science of risk.”

Powers’ research covers a variety of areas, including: government regulation and public policy; applications of game theory in risk and insurance; mathematical models in enterprise risk management; and the tax treatment of risk transfers. He has edited two scholarly books – The Economics and Politics of Choice No-Fault Insurance and Global Risk Management: Financial, Operational, and Insurance Strategies – and is the author of Icons, a science-fiction/fantasy novel. He also has published over seventy-five articles and book chapters, and received awards for outstanding research from the Journal of Risk and Insurance, the Risk and Insurance Management Society, and the International Insurance Society.

Powers joined Tsinghua from Temple University’s Fox School of Business, where he was professor of risk management and insurance. Prior to that, he served as deputy insurance commissioner for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and was responsible for designing Pennsylvania’s current “choice” no-fault automobile insurance system. Over the past three decades, he has consulted for numerous clients in both the public and private sectors, and served on a number of advisory boards, including the Pennsylvania Health-Care Cost Containment Council and the Philadelphia Mayor’s Auto Insurance Task Force.

Powers received his B.S. in applied mathematics, summa cum laude, from Yale University, and his Ph.D. in statistics from Harvard University.