Svetlozar (Zari) Rachev, MF program co-director, holds the rank of Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Texas Tech University. Dr. Rachev is one of the world’s foremost authorities in the application of heavy-tailed distributions in finance. He was a co-founder and President of Bravo Risk Management Group, originator of the Cognity methodology. Bravo was acquired by FinAnalytica, where Zari served as Chief Scientist. He served as the Frey Family Foundation Professor in Quantitative Finance in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics at Stony Brook University; Chair-Professor at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology; and Professor Emeritus of Statistics and Applied Probability at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of 14 books and over 300 published articles on finance, econometrics, probability, statistics and actuarial science. He has supervised over 50 Ph.D. and MS students in his career.