I am a Managing Director at DAI Management Consultants and in charge of the Valuation and Decision Analysis Groups. DAI is a valuation and risk-management consulting firm here in Pittsburgh. Our clients are involved primarily in the energy and power generation sectors; most of the clients are financial institutions (of one kind or another). At a general level, my job involves three things:
- Internal Knowledge Creation and Organization
I build most of the models and develop most of the forecasts used in our analytical assignments. I'm also the one most likely to "set the theme," or decide what things we need to know and how we, as a company, should best get acquainted with them. Often, the hardest part of any unstructured problem is figuring out what questions to ask. That's my job. I add structure, season liberally with various tools and resources, and fuss over final presentation.- Oversight of the Analytical Work done by DAI
Having asked "the questions," the next most important thing is knowing what a correct answer might look like. I review all of the analytical work done at DAI to ensure that the answers match the questions and that they're based on good science. I may work for a consulting firm, but I'm a scientist at heart. Nothing annoys me more than meaningless spin, hand-waving, and postmodern-ish "strategy" blather. I'm tough -- I use more red pens than any other color.- "Evangelism"
Surprisingly enough, what I (and many others) view to be the correct way to attack a problem is often seen as new and greeted with skepticism. Much of what I do involves trying to convince people (potential clients) that there's a better way to do things and that it's often a significantly better way. I write papers, I present at conferences, and I work with our marketing people to get a compelling message out. Even for those people who "already believe," they're often still skeptical of consultants in general (usually for good reason!). In those cases, I'm brought in when it's time "for your quant to talk to my quant" -- or something like that. It's my job to convince potential clients that we really can do what our marketing people say.
More specifically, my day-to-day work involves mostly finance and economics. Competitive power markets are a relatively new phenomenon. As a result, a great deal of effort has been spent over the last ten years thinking about how power markets (should) work (and why they often don't), what risks power market investors face, and how those risks can be measured and managed. Although significant advancements have been made, the power sector is still awash in uncertainties. From my perspective, that makes it very interesting.
Outside of work, I find myself intellectually entertained by a number of things (in no particular order):
- Investment Management (value of information measures, influence of risk perception, portfolio selection)
- Decision Making Under Uncertainty (choice across multiple projects, choice over time, visualization, decision aids)
- Heuristic Choice (robustness of simple rules, evolution of rules, classification)
- Simulation Methods (variance reduction methods, quasirandom numbers, efficient scenario design)
- Economic History (Roman and Medieval economic history, institutional evolution, history of (fiat) money)
- Computability Theory and Computation (automated theorem proving, quantum computation, complexity, information theory)
- Non-Traditional Markets (distributed computation, political markets, "event" markets, food portfolios, quantum portfolios)
For many of these subjects, I'm relegated to the status of "interested observer" and have virtually no formal background. About some of these subjects, I know a great deal. In general, my research concerns uncertainty. Perhaps that's too broad an area to be meaningful though.
The best way to understand my professional life and interests is to read my research. Alternatively, you can wander through my current curriculum vitae (as of April 29, 2006) to see what I've done that's worth noting.