Ron Dembo

From 1976 to 1986, Dembo was a professor at Yale University, where he was cross appointed between the Department of Computer Science and the School of Management. During that period, he was also a visiting professor at MIT. He has published work on finance and mathematical optimization, and holds a number of patents in computational finance, climate change and software engineering.[1]

Dembo was founder and CEO of Algorithmic's Incorporated.[2] Algorithmic's was sold to Fitch in 2005[3] and later to IBM in 2012.[4] It has since been acquired by SS&C.[5]

In 2005, Dembo founded Zerofootprint Software, a Toronto-based, cleantech software and services company.[6] In the same year, he founded the non-profit Zerofootprint Foundation[7] which won gold in the Climate Change category at the Canadian Environment Awards in 2008.[8] In 2009, Dembo also established the ZERO prize, a one million dollar prize for a design to retrofit a concrete building built between 1945 and 1990.[9]

He currently sits on a number of boards and is a member of the Climate Change Adaptation Advisory Committee Canada and was appointed to the Steering Committee of the World Urban Campaign, coordinated by UN-Habitat.[10]

In May 2007, Dembo was made a lifetime Fields Institute Fellow.[11] This fellowship is awarded to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the Fields Institute, its programs, and to the Canadian mathematical community.[12] Dembo's alma mater, the University of Waterloo, honored Dembo with a Distinguished Alumni Achievement Medal for Professional Achievement in business and climate change, 2007.[13]

In 2009, Dembo was appointed to the Steering Committee of the World Urban Campaign, coordinated by UN-Habitat.[14] In 2008, he received a Green Toronto Award from the City of Toronto for his work with Zerofootprint,[15] as well as a Certificate of Recognition, Champion of Green from the Government of Ontario.[16]

Dembo is the author of three books: Seeing Tomorrow: Rewriting the Rules of Risk (ISBN 978-0471247364), co-authored with Andrew Freeman, published in April 1998; Upside Downside: Simple Rules of Risk Management for the Smart Investor (ISBN 978-0385661591), co-authored with Daniel Stoffman, published in March 2006; and Everything You Wanted to Know About Offsetting But Were Afraid to Ask, co-authored with Clive Davidson and released in May 2007. His latest book, Risk Thinking, was published in 2021 (ISBN 978-1665707008).