Meet the Team

Lars tyge nielsen

Program Director

Lars Tyge Nielsen is the Director of the Mathematics of Finance MA (MAFN) program. He was a Chaired Professor, Associate Dean, and Director of the PhD program at INSEAD, the international business school in Fontainebleau, France and Singapore, and now Abu Dhabi. He has been President of the European Finance Association and a Research Fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Research, London. He has held academic appointments at Nankai University, China (Chair Professor), NYU, UT Austin, Copenhagen Business School, and the University of Copenhagen. His scholarly publications have appeared in journals such as Econometrica, the Journal of Economic Theory, and the Journal of Finance. His research topics have included asset market equilibrium, derivative securities, bargaining theory, expected utility and risk aversion, portfolio choice, and the concept of common knowledge. Dr. Nielsen spent 13 years on Wall Street as an executive at various institutions, including Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.

Izabela Rutkowski

Associate Director

Izabela Rutkowski is overseeing the MAFN Program administration, career services as well as employer and alumni relations. She is the career development advisor to the students and alumni of the program. Rutkowski has been with Columbia University since 2013. She holds a master’s degree from Columbia Journalism School, where she also worked as a career development advisor until 2019.

Gloria (Choi) Wong

Assistant Director

Gloria Wong provides career services to the MAFN program. She was a career advisor at Boston College Carroll Graduate School of Management before she joined Columbia in August 2023. Gloria holds a Masters in College Student Development and Counseling from Northeastern University where she also got her Bachelors degree and worked as an academic advisor.

Martyna Grazda

Program Coordinator

Martyna Grazda joined Columbia University in June 2021. She provides day-to-day academic program support to faculty, students, and administration, including admissions, student affairs, and career management. Grazda also supports the MAFN program by helping the students with all procedural questions, course registration, and other academic-related activities. Previously she was working as a manager of a law firm. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Brooklyn College.

   The MAFN Steering Commitee   

The MAFN program is overseen by a steering committee whose current members are:

Johan de Jong, Chair, Department of Mathematics

Tian Zheng, Chair, Department of Statistics

Ioannis Karatzas, Department of Mathematics

Philip Protter, Department of Statistics

Marcel Nutz, Department of Statistics and Department of Mathematics

Lars Tyge Nielsen, Director of the MAFN program

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Have more questions?

Send us an email: mafn@columbia.edu