Stavros Zenios - Biography#
Stavros Zenios is a Professor of Operations Management and Finance at Durham University, a Professor of Finance and Management Science at the University of Cyprus, and a Non-resident Fellow with Bruegel. He is also a Member of the Cyprus Academy of Sciences, Letters, and Arts. He holds a BSc (Mathematics, 1980) from London University. He received, also in 1980, a Higher National Diploma in Electrical Engineering from HTI (Cyprus) and completed the UK Council of Engineering Institutions Part II (BEng) during his military service (1982). He received an MSc (1984) and PhD (1986) from Princeton University in Engineering Management Systems.
His teaching and research interests are in the interface of operations research and finance, focusing primarily on risk management under uncertainty and decision-making under ambiguity. His academic appointments were mainly in the US and Cyprus, with visting positions in Canada, Greece, Israel, Italy, Norway. Since 2024, he has been a Professor at Durham University in the UK.
His research spans theoretical and modeling work in optimization applications to finance. He was a pioneer of robust optimization and the design of parallel algorithms, developing the first algorithm for pricing complex financial instruments on massively parallel computers (US patent no. 5,187,801). He made contributions to diverse applications, currently focusing on climate change and political risks to sovereign debt. Dr. Zenios has published more than 200 articles in refereed journals, edited books, or refereed conference proceedings. He co-authored with Yair Censor an award-winning book and single-authored three, and (co)edited 20 books or special journal issues.
Prof. Zenios received the 2006 EURO Excellence in Practice Award for his work on scenario optimization for online personal financial planning and the INFORMS Computer Science Section award for his book Parallel Optimization; these diverse awards attest to the breadth and impact of both modeling and theoretical work. He was the first Area Editor for Financial Services for Operations Research. He held or holds editorial positions in several journals, such as Operations Research, Management Science, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Journal of Banking and Finance, European Journal of Operational Research. He received funding from several agencies in Europe and the United States, including grants from the National Science Foundation, two Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellowships, the European Stability Mechanism, and the Bank for International Settlements. He has lectured extensively as an invited or keynote speaker at 65 conferences or universities in 35 countries.
His leadership positions include serving as the first Dean of the School of Economics and Management and the first two-term Rector at the University of Cyprus, two-term President of UNICA-Universities of the European Capitals, and Vice-Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors to the President of Cyprus which was established at Dr Zenios’ recommendation.
