Cristián Bravo

Cristián Bravo is a Chilean academic. He currently holds a Professor position at the Departments of Statistical & Actuarial Science, and is the Canada Research Chair in Banking and Insurance Analytics at Western University. He is also the Director of the Banking Analytics Lab and a lead researcher at Canada's Financial Wellness lab.

Education
Bravo attended University of Chile where he earned a B.Sc in Industrial Engineering (2007), an M.Sc in Operations Research (2008), and a Ph.D in Engineering Systems (2013).

Career and work
Bravo began his career as a Research Fellow at KU Leuven from 2013 to 2014, before taking on the role of Instructor Professor at the University of Talca, Chile, from 2014 to 2015. He joined the University of Southampton as an Assistant Professor in 2016, advancing to Associate Professor in 2018. In 2018, he was appointed as a Fellow of Alan Turing Institite. In 2019, he took a position to Western University as an Associate Professor, where he was promoted to Full Professor in 2024.

He is known for his contribution to credit risk, and has been recognized by his productivity and impact in credit scoring in surveys in the field. Since 2018, He is an editor for "Applied Soft Computing" and the "Journal of Business Analytics". He has authored over 70 academic outputs, and co-authored the book "Profit Driven Analytics". He also has contributed to banking regulations in Canada, supporting the OSFI in the drafting of new Artifical Interlligence regulations for financial institutions and the Alan Turing Institute in their work towards regulation on Bias in Algorithmic Decision-Making in the U.K.

He has received funding from FONDECYT, Chile (2013); the British Academy's Leverhulme scheme (2016 - 2017), U.K; the NSERC Discovery Grant (2020-2025) and Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Banking and Insurance Analytics, Canada. He also has been a co-investgator at a NSERC Alliance Grant (2021, under Principal Investigator: Matt Davison).

He has supervised numerous PhD and Master's students and co-supervised PostDocs. He has been interviewed and quoted by diverse media outlets, such as The Wall Street Journal, WIRED, CTV News, Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, Global News and CBC News. He is a panel member on CBC News’ Weekend Business Panel discussing banking, finance, and AI topics. In 2024, Bravo was a selected academic in the 2024 Science Meets Parliament program by the Canadian Science Policy Centre.