Ron Dembo

Ron Samuel Dembo is an academic and entrepreneur.

Academia
From 1976 to 1986, Dembo served as a professor at Yale University. During this time, he held joint appointments in both the Department of Computer Science and the School of Management. He co-authored three Technical Reports at Yale's Dept. of Computer Science in 1984. Additionally, he served as a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The online faculty listings at Yale's and MIT's Computer Science and Management Dept.'s do not reflect Mr. Dembo's employment there at this time.

Dembo's scholarly contributions encompass a diverse range of subjects, including finance and mathematical optimization. He is listed as inventor for patents in fields such as computational finance, climate change, and software engineering.

Entrepreneurship
Dembo was founder and CEO of Algorithmics Incorporated. Algorithmics was sold to Fitch in 2005 and later to IBM in 2012. It has since been acquired by SS&C.

In 2005, Dembo founded Zerofootprint Software, a Toronto-based, cleantech software and services company. In the same year, he founded the non-profit Zerofootprint Foundation which won gold in the Climate Change category at the Canadian Environment Awards in 2008. 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.

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.

Awards and Honors
In May 2007, Dembo was made a lifetime Fields Institute Fellow. This fellowship is awarded to "individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the Fields Institute," its programs, and to the Canadian mathematical community. 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.

In 2008, he received a Green Toronto Award from the City of Toronto for his work with Zerofootprint, as well as a Certificate of Recognition, Champion of Green from the Government of Ontario.

In 2009 and 2010, Dembo participated in the Steering Committee of the World Urban Campaign, as coordinated by UN Habitat, in Barcelona, Paris and Rio de Janeiro. As of 2022, Partners may nominate themselves for positions on the Steering Committee and Committee membership is subject to a vote. In 2024, Zerofootprint remains a Partner in the Business and Industries Constituency of the World Urban Campaign by UN Habitat.

Books
Dembo is the author of three books: Seeing Tomorrow: Rewriting the Rules of Risk, co-authored with Andrew Freeman, published in April 1998; Upside Downside: Simple Rules of Risk Management for the Smart Investor, 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).