Helyette Geman, a research professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, has been named the 2022 Financial Engineer of the Year by the International Association for Quantitative Finance (IAQF) and Northfield Financial.

Helyette Geman

Established in 1993, the annual award recognizes those who have made significant contributions in the development and creative applications of financial engineering. Its recipients include a number of Nobel Laureates. Geman is the first woman to be honored in the prize’s 30-year history.

An expert on the finance of commodities and probability theory, Geman has advised banks, energy and mining companies, and commodity exchanges on the subjects of interest rates, catastrophic risks, crude oil, electricity and renewables, and agricultural commodities.

“Geman’s research across diverse topics, and her collaborations with others from across our field and around the world, is illustrative of her extensive career of important contributions,” said Dan diBartolomeo, president of Northfield Financial.

In addition to her work at Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering, Geman is the director of the Commodity Finance Centre at Birkbeck – University of London. She is also a member of the Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute at Johns Hopkins University and a senior fellow at the Policy Centre for the New South in Rabat, Morocco. Geman counts among her previous PhD students the philosopher Nassim Taleb, author of the books ‘The Black Swan’ and ‘Antifragility’.

She will accept the award at a ceremony in New York in April.

This story originally appeared on the WSE website.