University of Illinois WebStore, SAS, and State Farm invite you to SAS Days to explore SAS technologies and real-world application.
Schedule of Events:
SAS DAY 2013
February 5 | Illini Union Ballroom A
(It is actually not necessary to register for any events. Just feel free to show up to the sessions you wish to attend.)
10-10:45am | State Farm Research & Development Center
presented by Scott Farris and Bill Messner – State Farm Insurance
The State Farm Research & Development Center employs approximately 90 interns in its facility on the U of I campus. Our presentation will give an overview of two of the functions; the actuarial research function and the MAGNet function.
The Actuarial Function of the State Farm Research and Development Center (RDC) focuses on four objectives; providing meaningful research and development for the organization, intern development, collaboration on research and analytic efforts, and recruiting strong candidates to the organization. Central to these objectives is developing skills that allow interns to become successful analytic professionals. We will present a high level look at State Farm’s undergraduate program for developing well rounded analytic professionals in the areas of analytic training, statistical programming and development, leadership training and technical presentation.
11am-11:45am | Reinsurance Pricing Application in SAS
presented by Blake Konrardy – State Farm Insurance
State Farm interns at the Research and Development Center on the U of I campus have partnered with the SAS institute to test functionality of a new SAS statistical procedure called PROC SEVERITY. This procedure was integrated into past and current work on loss distribution modeling and reinsurance pricing. Blake will discuss the underlying methodology of a reinsurance project that includes the following steps; data extraction and transformation, loss development of current claims, trending, distributional modeling and loss simulation. Particular attention will be paid to spliced and finite mixture modeling techniques in SAS.
1-1:45pm | SAS Global Academic Program: Helping Students Succeed with SAS
presented by Julie Pettlick– SAS Institute
SAS is used in virtually all sectors of the US economy. SAS professionals are always in demand, the work is interesting and the disciplines SAS is used in are always evolving to better solve the business problems companies’ face as they strive to be successful. This presentation will provide an overview of the programs and initiatives available to students through SAS. Helping students succeed in their academic and career pursuits is the focus of SAS Student Programs. Opportunities for students to learn SAS, use SAS to conduct research, get certified, attend SAS conferences and showcase their work and network with industry professionals will be presented.
2-2:45pm | Economic Capital Model in SAS
presented by Alan Kessler and Carol Frigo – State Farm Insurance
Interns at the Research and Development Center on the U of I campus are responsible for investigating new methods and techniques used to build Economic Capital Models. Alan Kessler has lead teams over the past several semesters building ARIMA models, distribution models and simulations processes to support that work. Carol and Alan will discuss their recent work on this topic which was presented in an exhibition at the SAS analytics conference 2012 in Las Vegas.
The discussion will contain an overview of the overall process and highlight major components of the their work. They will discuss the forecasting process, distribution modeling process and simulation methods used to create the model.
Register now at https://webstore.illinois.edu/Shop/product.aspx?zpid=2145.
Please share this invitation with anyone that might be interested in attending SAS Day 2013.
Presenter Biographies:
Scott Faris
Research Manager
P & C Acturial Department
State Farm Research and Development Center
Scott Farris is the Research Manager for the Actuarial function at the State Farm Research & Development Center on the University of Illinois campus at Urbana-Champaign. He supervises undergraduate and graduate research related directly to P&C Actuarial work. His current staff includes 3 actuaries and 25 interns. Research projects include; predictive modeling, pricing & reserving models, research on new techniques and methods, and dynamic risk modeling.
Scott has 30 years of experience at State Farm. His early work includes personal lines and commercial lines pricing work. Later he moved on to supervise the Statistical Analysis and Research Unit in the Fire Actuarial department. There, he co-authored two papers on catastrophe ratemaking, oversaw the implementation of State Farm’s ratemaking warehouse and many of the current fire ratemaking applications. More recently, he guided a System related effort in cost optimization of catastrophe claim systems.
Bill Messner
Statistical Research Analyst
Strategic Resources
State Farm Research and Development Center
Bill Messner manages the Modeling and Analytics Graduate Network (MAGNet) program at the State Farm Research & Development Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He supervises graduate-level predictive modeling and statistical research projects involving several areas of the enterprise: Strategic Resources, P&C Actuarial, SF Bank, and Claims, to name a few.
After working five years as a trade operations analyst at Chicago Equity Partners, Bill pursued master’s degrees in statistics and quantitative psychology at Illinois. While a graduate student, Bill interned at the State Farm Research & Development Center. Bill joined the Strategic Resources Predictive Analytics team in 2011 and is responsible for supporting advanced analytic efforts across a variety of internal business areas. He is one of the company’s emerging leaders in the area of text analytics, and enjoys predictive modeling and optimization problems. In 2012, Bill assumed leadership of the MAGNet intern program, directly leading much of the students’ work & development.
Blake Konrady
Acturial Intern – graduate in statistics
State Farm Research and Development Center
Blake is a currently a graduate intern at the research and development center. Blake recently completed his undergraduate degree in Statistics and will attend law school next year. Blake leads a team of interns investigating loss distributions for reinsurance pricing. His team builds data extraction and transformation programs, loss development models and distribution models as part of their pricing work. Blake’s group worked extensively with SAS PROC SEVERITY, a new distribution modeling procedure developed by SAS. As part of his work, Blake interacts with SAS developers and statisticians regarding SAS procedures and their performance in insurance pricing. Blake’s work was presented in an exhibit last fall at the SAS analytics 2012 conference in Las Vegas.
Julie Petlick, Ph.D
Student Programs Manager, SAS
Dr. Julie H. Petlick is the student programs manager for SAS where she specializes in facilitating student knowledge, skills and opportunities related to SAS technologies. She regularly attends conferences, gives presentations, develops learning assets, and leverages social media to help students continually develop their SAS skill. She also works with students to help connect them with potential employers looking for new SAS talent. She previously worked as an analytical consultant for SAS where she provided training to faculty, staff and students for integrating SAS into their coursework and research.
Dr. Petlick earned a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from North Carolina State University where she studied learning and cognition. She was an assistant professor in the Graphic Communications Program at North Carolina State University where her research interests included visualization, learning and cognitive processes. She was a co-developer for the standards based Visualization in Technology Education (VisTE) curriculum. She has given numerous presentations and workshops as well as authored or co-authored numerous papers in various journals and conference proceedings such as Brain Research Bulletin, American Society for Engineering Education, Extreme Programming, Animation World Network, and SAS Global Forum.
Alan Kessler
Acturial Intern – majoring in acturial science
State Farm Research and Development Center
Alan is a senior at the University of Illinois majoring in Actuarial Science and current intern at the research and development center. Alan leads the Economic Capital Modeling team who supports the P&C Underwriting model. His team develops data extract and transformation processes as well as building ARIMA forecasts models, distributional models and Monte Carlo simulation models. Alan’s work was presented in an exhibit last fall at the SAS analytics 2012 conference in Las Vegas where he won first prize for his work. This summer Alan will be working at the SAS Institute in Cary, North Carolina under a joint State Farm/SAS internship. Alan will start work full time next fall at State Farm headquarters in Bloomington.
Carol Frigo
Acturial Intern – majoring in statistics and economics
State Farm Research and Development Center
Carol is a junior at the University of Illinois majoring in statistics and economics. She is a current intern at the research and development center. Carol was instrumental in developing a loss reserve application that is used to set reserves at State Farm. Recently, Carol joined Alan’s team and performed much of the distributional modeling for the ARIMA forecast simulations in our Economic Capital Model. Carol was invited to present her work in an exhibit at the SAS 2012 analytic conference in Las Vegas.