15 June 2022
Professor Torsten Kleinow will become the new Director of the Research Centre for Longevity Risk (RCLR). The Centre is an independent institute at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) for research on developments in human survival rates and life expectancies and their impact on society. The Centre is an initiative of NN Group and the Amsterdam School of Economics (ASE) and receives additional funding from the Dutch government for its research programme.
Kleinow was recently appointed as full professor by the UvA Executive Board. He will hold the newly established ‘Actuarial and Economic Aspects of Longevity Risk’ chair at the UvA. His appointment at the university will start in August and he will take over as director of the Centre from professor Michel Vellekoop in September.
His research focuses on the modelling of human mortality and the impact of increasing life expectancy on society. He is particularly interested in stochastic models that capture the influence of the socio-economic environment and lifestyle factors on a population’s mortality rate. Such models can then be applied to quantify the longevity gap between different socio-economic groups. This information is also used to investigate the effect of an aging population on public pension systems.
Professor Kleinow studied at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and received his degree in mathematics in 1998. He later obtained his PhD in Economics from the same institution. From 2004 to 2010 he worked as a lecturer at Heriot-Watt University’s Department of Actuarial Mathematics and Statistics in Edinburgh. Since 2010 he has held the position of associate professor at Heriot-Watt University. He has published on many different aspects of longevity risks and has supervised numerous PhD students on subjects that are closely related to the Centre’s central research questions.
The Research Centre for Longevity Risk (RCLR) is an independent institute that researches developments in survival rates and life expectancies of the population in the Netherlands and other countries and how these are influenced by various factors. RCLR is an initiative of the Amsterdam School of Economics of the University of Amsterdam and NN Group (NN). Both parties anticipate that the RCLR will enable them to gain a better understanding of the financial and social consequences of longer lifespans and contribute to the public debate by raising people’s awareness.
The Amsterdam School of Economics (ASE) is part of UvA Economics and Business at the University of Amsterdam. It is known for the high quality of its research-based teaching and its research, which makes significant contributions to addressing social problems.
In addition to full-time Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programmes in Economics, Behavioural Economics, Econometrics, Actuarial Science, Business Analytics and Economics of Taxation, the ASE offers postgraduate courses to financial corporate sector professionals who want to broaden or deepen their professional knowledge. The ASE employs more than 200 people who serve more than 2,500 Bachelor’s, Master’s, PhD and postgraduate students.
For press enquires, please contact Mike Mansfield at UvA Economics and Business (E: m.mansfield@uva.nl, tel.: +31 6 29 29 58 28).