Staff profile

Stavros A. Zenios is a Professor of Operations Management and Finance on sabbatical leave from the University of Cyprus. He is also a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, Letters, and Arts of Cyprus, and a Non-resident Fellow of Bruegel in Brussels. 

He is the author of two books and more than 130 scholarly articles in leading international journals in risk management, financial engineering, and management science. He is currently working on sovereign debt sustainability issues, including the effects of climate change and the pricing of political risks. His work on personal financial planning received the EURO Excellence in Practice Award, and he also received awards for his work on the performance of financial institutions. He was awarded two Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellowships by the European Commission. His work on financial modeling and robust optimization is cited extensively, with more than 13,000 citations (h-index 55, i-10index 144). His book Practical Financial Optimization: Decision Making for Financial Engineers (Blackwell-Wiley Finance) is used in advanced classes in European and North American Universities. His book with Patrick Harker on the Performance of Financial Institutions (Cambridge University Press) was translated into Chinese. His book with Yair Censor Parallel Optimization (Oxford University Press) received the INFORMS Prize for Computing. 

He served two terms as Rector of the University of Cyprus, where he was the first Dean of the School of Economics and Management and as President of UNICA-Universities of the European Capitals. He was Vice-chairman of the Cyprus Council of Economic Advisors and on the Board of Central Bank of Cyprus. 

He consulted extensively with international institutions and businesses, such as the World Bank, the European Stability Mechanism, the Union Bank of Switzerland, METLIFE Insurance, and BSI, among others, and governments, including the Finnish Ministry of Finance and the Cyprus Auditor General. 

 

Journal Article

• Lotfi, S., Pagliardi, G., Paparoditis, E., & Zenios, S. A. (online). Hedging political risk in international portfolios. European Journal of Operational Research, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2024.10.017
• Papavassiliou, E., Topaloglou, N., & Zenios, S. A. (online). GDP-linked bonds as a new asset class. Quantitative Finance, 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/14697688.2024.2386323
• Lotfi, S., & Zenios, S. A. (2024). Robust mean-to-CVaR optimization under ambiguity in distributions means and covariance. Review of Managerial Science, 18(7), 2115-2140. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11846-023-00715-z
• Zenios, S. A. (2024). The climate-sovereign debt doom loop: what does the literature suggest?. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 67, Article 101414. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2024.101414
• Lotfi, S., Milidonis, A., & Zenios, S. A. (2024). Mispricing of debt expansion in the eurozone sovereign credit market. Journal of Financial Stability, 70, Article 101215. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfs.2023.101215