Our Team
CCFI Director; Professor of Actuarial Finance
Enrico Biffis is Professor of Actuarial Finance at Imperial College Business School and Academic Director of the Centre for Climate Finance and Investment. His research focuses on quantitative risk modelling, climate and nature risk analytics, sustainable finance, and the design of data-driven tools for measuring and managing complex financial risks.
He has collaborated with leading financial institutions, regulators, and international organisations on climate finance, investment risk, insurance, and risk transfer. His work spans climate investment risk and stress testing, biodiversity and nature-related financial risk, carbon markets, emissions targets, parametric insurance, and green technology adoption.
His expertise supports the development of robust, science-based analytics that help investors, insurers, firms, and public institutions translate climate and environmental risks into decision-useful insights for portfolio construction, scenario analysis, capital allocation, and resilience planning.
Cecelia Johnson
CCFI Operations Manager
Cecelia Johnson is the Centre Operations Manager at CCFI, responsible for overseeing day-to-day operations and ensuring the centre runs efficiently and effectively. With a strong focus on organisation, collaboration, and service delivery, she is committed to supporting both staff and stakeholders to achieve the centre’s goals.
She previously held positions at SOAS University of London, the Royal College of Art, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), where she supported research strategy. With a background in securing research funding and managing project deliverables, she brings a structured, results-driven approach to operational leadership and programme delivery.
Professor of Finance & Economics
Patrick Bolton is Professor of Finance and Economics and a leading scholar in financial economics, contract theory, financial intermediation, and the role of institutions in shaping market outcomes. His work brings together economics, finance, institutional design, and public policy, with particular relevance for understanding how financial systems allocate risk, support resilience, and mobilise capital for long-term economic development.
He has held senior academic appointments at many of the world’s leading universities, including Columbia Business School, the University of California, Berkeley, Harvard University, Princeton University, the London School of Economics, École Polytechnique, and the Université libre de Bruxelles. His academic career reflects exceptional breadth across economics, finance, and political economy.
Professor Bolton’s research examines how financial systems allocate capital, price risk, discipline borrowers, and respond to systemic vulnerabilities. His work on contract theory, banking, financial intermediation, sovereign debt, and public policy provides a strong foundation for analysing how climate, nature, energy, and macro-financial risks transmit through firms, financial institutions, sovereign balance sheets, and the wider economy.
His expertise supports the design of rigorous frameworks for risk analysis, the development of financial and institutional mechanisms that strengthen economic security and resilience, and the mobilisation of capital towards sustainable growth, energy security, and the transition to a lower-carbon economy.
He is widely known for foundational contributions to the theory of contracts and credit markets, including as co-author ofÌýContract TheoryÌý²¹²Ô»åÌýCredit Markets for the Poor. His work has shaped modern thinking on how financial institutions allocate risk, enforce discipline, manage systemic vulnerabilities, and support more resilient and sustainable economic systems.
Director of the Brevan Howard Centre; Professor ofÌýFinance and Economics
Franklin Allen is Professor of Finance and Economics and Director of the Brevan Howard Centre at Imperial College Business School. His research spans financial intermediation, asset pricing, corporate finance, banking, systemic risk, and the design of financial institutions and markets.
His recent work focuses on carbon markets, nature-related finance, green securities design, and the financial mechanisms needed to support sustainable investment and economic resilience. He has examined how markets can be structured to price environmental risks more effectively, mobilise private capital, and improve incentives for firms, investors, and policymakers.
Professor Allen brings extensive experience across academia, financial economics, and institutional leadership. Before joining Imperial, he was a long-standing member of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he is now Emeritus Professor. He has also served in senior editorial and professional roles, including as Executive Editor of theÌýReview of Financial Studies, Managing Editor of theÌýReview of Finance, and President of the American Finance Association, the Western Finance Association, the Society for Financial Studies, the Financial Intermediation Research Society, and the Financial Management Association.
His expertise supports the development of rigorous financial frameworks for climate and nature risk analytics, market design, sustainable capital allocation, and the creation of instruments that can help strengthen economic security, resilience, and long-term growth.
Professor of Finance
Marcin Kacperczyk is Professor of Finance at Imperial College Business School. His research spans investments, information economics, climate risk, and financial intermediation, with a particular focus on how financial markets price and transmit climate-related risks.
His work examines the pricing of carbon risk, investor incentives to divest from carbon-intensive assets, and the role of regulation, technological change, and market structure in shaping capital allocation. He has also contributed to research on information flows in financial markets, institutional investors, and the role of financial intermediaries in investment decisions.
Professor Kacperczyk’s expertise helps investors, firms, and policymakers translate carbon exposure, transition risk, regulation, and technological disruption into decision-useful insights for asset pricing, portfolio construction, risk management, and sustainable capital allocation.
He is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, a research adviser at the European Central Bank, Managing Editor of the Review of Finance, and a former President of the European Finance Association.
Associate Professor
Mirabelle Muûls is Associate Professor of Economics at Imperial College Business School, Co-Director of the School of Convergence Science – Sustainability, and Co-Director of the Hitachi–Imperial Centre for Decarbonisation and Natural Climate Solutions. Her work sits at the intersection of economics, climate policy, finance, and industrial transition, with a focus on how institutions, incentives, and markets can support the shift to a low-carbon economy.
Her research examines how climate policies and climate risks affect firms’ emissions, energy efficiency, innovation, competitiveness, investment, and performance. A central strand of her work analyses how regulatory and financial incentives shape firm behaviour, generating insights that are directly relevant to climate finance, industrial policy, and the design of effective transition pathways.
Professor Muûls’s expertise helps investors, firms, and policymakers translate climate policy, transition risk, and decarbonisation incentives into decision-useful insights for capital allocation, corporate strategy, risk management, and sustainable growth.
Assistant Professor
Magda Rola-Janicka is an Assistant Professor of Finance at Imperial Business School, a member of the Finance Theory Group, and a Research Affiliate of CEPR. Her research sits at the intersection of financial intermediation, political economy, and climate finance, with a particular focus on how financial systems and policy frameworks shape the transition to a low-carbon economy.
Magda actively contributes to the academic and policy dialogue in this area, co-organising the CEPR–Stigler Centre Conference Series on the Political Economy of Finance and the PolEconFin platform,Ìýwhich brings together researchers studyingÌýinteractions between politics and finance,Ìýincluding issues related to sustainable investing and climateÌýpolicies.
Ryan Williams
Research Fellow
Ryan Williams is a Research Fellow at the CCFI. He is also currently the Chief Economist at Enoda, an cleantech company based in Edinburgh and serves on the UK’s Regulatory Policy Committee. He was previously a Director at Grant Thornton UK, specialising in energy economics and a Principal at Oxera, where he managed regulatory initiatives across industries like electricity, gas, telecoms, water, and transport. As an academic, Ryan was previously an Associate Professor at at Université Paris Dauphine and at the University of Arizona in the United States. Prior to academia, Ryan worked for PwC.
Erik Chavez
Research Fellow
Erik Chavez is a Research Fellow. His research activity and publications range from the areas of climate dynamics to weather parametric financial securities design, and macrofinancial climate risk. He has worked for 6 years at the Agricultural Risk Management Team at the World Bank. He is a recipientÌýof the Lloyds Science of Risk Prize, and a co-recipient of the FT’s Responsible Business Research Award and has been the co-PI of three international research projects funded by the European Union and African Development Bank.ÌýÌýHe completed his Ph.D. in climate dynamics and economics between ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ and the ENS Paris (Ecole Normale Supérieure).
Senior Teaching Fellow
Anastasiya worked for 10 years as a credit trader at a global investment bank on structured credit products, index ETF, bonds and CDS developing expertise in financial markets and risk management. She worked on green bond market research with Climate Bonds Initiative, and led an ESG portfolio review for a wealth management. Graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, PhD.
Research Associate
Iva is researcher in sustainable finance investigating how capital markets can address environmental externalities. She is currently finalising a PhD at King’s College London on a full Doctoral Research Scholarship. Concurrently, Iva is a Teaching Fellow at Imperial Business School at masters’ and MBA level.ÌýIva previously worked as a consultant in financial advisory services at Deloitte and in fixed income at Robeco Asset Management.
´¡²ú¾±ÌýLangbridge
PhD Student
Abi Langbridge is a final-year PhD researcher in Design Engineering at ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½, co-supervised by IBM Research. Her work develops machine learning and optimal transport methods for robust decision-making in complex, high-dimensional data environments, with applications across industrial systems, digital twins, anomaly detection, fairness, and sustainable transport.
Her research explores how probabilistic modelling, constrained optimisation, optimal transport, and generative methods can improve the reliability, interpretability, and fairness of AI systems operating under uncertainty. She has developed several papers with green applications to shipping, including work relevant to emissions reduction, operational efficiency, and the use of AI for more sustainable maritime systems.
Abi’s expertise is relevant to the development of robust climate and energy analytics, particularly where AI systems must integrate heterogeneous data, detect emerging risks, support evidence-based reasoning, and translate complex industrial and environmental signals into reliable decision support.
Xiangzhong (Shaun) MengÌý
Research Assistant
Shaun holds an MSc in Risk Management and Financial Engineering from Imperial College Business School, graduating with Distinction. His research interests include carbon markets, market microstructure, climate finance, and the use of artificial intelligence in financial industries.
Isaac Ip
Research Assistant
Isaac Ip is a third-year student studying Mechanical Engineering with Nuclear Engineering (MEng) at ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½. He is interested in the intersection between engineering and finance, particularly in energy sector projects.
Isaac has completed internships at E&Y and New Modern (HK), working in accounting and wind turbine risk assessment, respectively.
Eric Nowak
Visiting Professor
Eric Nowak is a Professor and Eric Nowak is Director of the Center for Climate Finance and Sustainability at USI. His research focuses on ESG Finance, carbon markets, biodiversity and forest finance, and the integrity of nature-based solutions., bringing a distinguished record of academic excellence and deep expertise in ESG and climate finance to Imperial Business School. His research is widely published in leading finance journals, including the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, and the Review of Finance, reflecting a high level of scholarly rigour.
In addition to his academic work, Professor Nowak holds a number of prominent governance and advisory roles. These include serving on the Verra Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) Advisory Group, the Gold Standard Methodology Expert Group for Forestry and Blue Carbon, and the UNFCCC Article 6.4 Roster of Experts, contributing to the development of global climate policy and carbon market standards.
Benjamin Horton
Visiting Professor
Professor is Director of the Earth Observatory of Singapore and a professor at the Asian School of the Environment in Nanyang Technological University (NTU). His research concerns sea-level change, with the aim of understanding and integrating the external and internal mechanisms that have determined sea-level changes in the past, and which will shape such changes in the future. He has won several awards in his career and contributed to both COP26 and IPCC outputs.
Rowan Douglas
Honorary Practice Fellow
Rowan Douglas CBE, FRGS is an Honorary Practice Fellow at the Centre for Climate Finance and Investment, with more than thirty years’ experience in international reinsurance, disaster risk finance, climate resilience, public policy, and financial regulation. His work focuses on bringing science, analytics, and financial innovation together to improve the management of climate, catastrophe, and systemic risks.
He began his career as an underwriter at Lloyd’s of London before holding senior executive roles at Willis Towers Watson and Howden Group until 2025. He has founded and led several major initiatives at the interface of insurance, climate risk, and sustainable finance, including the Insurance Development Forum, developed with the UN, World Bank, and industry leaders; the Coalition for Climate Resilient Investment; the Willis Research Network; and Artemis.bm.
Rowan’s expertise is particularly relevant to the development of robust climate and nature risk analytics, disaster risk financing, resilience investment, and the design of public-private mechanisms that strengthen economic security against physical climate risks. His work has helped embed scientific evidence and risk analytics into reinsurance, financial regulation, infrastructure investment, and climate resilience policy.
He has served on the NERC Council and the UK Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology. He holds an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Bath and was made CBE in 2016 for services to the economy through risk, insurance, and sustainable growth.
Robert Ritz
Honorary Research Fellow
Robert Ritz is Assistant Director of the at the University of Cambridge and the Director of its Energy Policy Forum, Senior Research Associate in Economics and Policy at Cambridge Judge Business School, and a Fellow and Director of Studies in Economics at Peterhouse, Cambridge. Robert is an expert on competitive strategy, energy markets, and carbon pricing. He serves as a member of the Academic Panels at the UK’s Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) and Office of Gas & Electricity Markets (Ofgem). His research has been published in leading international journals including theÌýRAND Journal of Economics,ÌýJournal of Public Economics,ÌýJournal of Environmental Economics and ManagementÌý²¹²Ô»åÌýJournal of Financial Intermediation, and he has contributed to theÌýHandbook of Game Theory and Industrial Organization.