As the world transitions to renewable power, there is a pressing need to not only safeguard renewable energy assets but also quantify their risk exposure to natural calamities.

Abhirup Bhattacharya, our next pathbreaker, works as Catastrophe Model Developer at Renew Risk, a company that leverages a science-led approach to risk analytics to help insurers, developers and those financing renewable energy projects to future-proof these assets against natural catastrophes.

Abhirup talks to Shyam Krishnamurthy from The Interview Portal about the unique domain of catastrophe modelling which requires a working knowledge of atmospheric perils and statistical / mathematical techniques of data analysis along with fluency in programming languages.

For students, many fields like structural engineering, hydrology, meteorology, data science, statistics, econometrics have their origins in Applied Mathematics !

Abhirup, what were your growing up years like?

I grew up in a very small town, named Raiganj in the northern half of West Bengal, in a family that is moderately well connected to the world of academia. My father (Dr. Amal Bhattacharya) is a retired professor of Zoology at Raiganj University, and my mother (Mrs. Basabi Bhattacharya) is a retired vocational teacher at a local school. 

My academic career was deeply inspired by my elder sister (Dr. Amrita Bhattacharya – currently serving as an Associate Professor of Mathematics at a Govt. college in Kolkata) who in turn followed the footsteps of my uncle (Dr. Kamal Kanti Nandi – an IIT Madras alumnus and a retired professor of Applied Mathematics) in pursuing higher studies in Applied Mathematics.

Apart from academics, I had a knack for playing badminton. I was fortunate enough to participate in the state championship (representing my district) for 3 consecutive years in the sub-junior category.

But like most of the Indian kids, I had to shift my focus towards academics as board exams of 10th and 12th standard neared. And then onwards till today, playing badminton is more of a personal mood-elevating hobby to me rather than hard core professional discipline.

What did you do for graduation/post graduation?

I completed my Bachelor’s (Science) and Master’s (Science) in Applied Mathematics (following family tradition!) from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, with a scholarship named “INSPIRE”, sponsored by DST (this scholarship was set up to encourage students in pursuing academic careers in basic science). I also did an MTech in Atmospheric Science and Meteorology from IIT Delhi.

What were some of the key influences that led you to such an offbeat, unconventional, and unique career in Applied Mathematics?

Now here’s a fun fact. I used to like math as a subject quite a lot in high school (and did fairly good in board exams). But one thing I didn’t realize (or perhaps didn’t pay enough attention to my sister’s experience) is that transitioning from school math to graduation math requires an astronomical level of mental elevation in understanding abstract concepts. 

I did lots of differentiation and integration in school math, but when it came to understanding the key concepts of classical calculus, I stumbled and fell face down. Very soon the advanced concepts of real analysis, abstract algebra, topology and other branches of Pure Mathematics (except linear algebra) started puzzling my mind as I couldn’t visualize anything. 

On the other hand, I managed to keep myself afloat with the concepts involving more visualization math like vector space, differential equations etc.

Then it clicked and I came to realize that perhaps, I’m more of an engineering guy than a pure science guy.

But at that time, one could not just get admission into a master’s degree in engineering (e.g., MTech) after having a 3-years BSc. Hence, I finished my MSc in Applied Mathematics before looking for options for further higher studies in engineering disciplines that my MSc degree allowed.

This brings me to the next chapter in my academic career, a fruit of probably one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life so far.

Tell us about your career path after MSc in Applied Mathematics

So, after completing my MSc and further cracking the GATE exam, I started applying to multiple MTech courses across various engineering disciplines at multiple IITs. My particular interest was the disciplines that utilize numerical problem-solving using programming languages. The motivation was simple; I needed to build a career in the technical domain by leveraging my extensive knowledge base in mathematics and moderate averseness to programming languages than a regular BTech candidate. These efforts were swiftly followed by multiple rejections at various levels. But only one course at IIT Delhi, MTech in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (AST) in the Center for Atmospheric Sciences (CAS) gave me some hope when I was placed in the penultimate position on the waiting list of selected candidates. Luckily, I got admitted to this course.

The 2-year course at IIT-D opened my otherwise narrow world to new opportunities from re-learning core concepts of fluid dynamics in a more fun (engineering!) way. I also got introduced to interpreted languages like MATLAB and python. The disaggregation of huge syllabi into smaller segments and going through smaller but intense class tests / assignments / minors / majors every couple of weeks helped me get a firm grip on key concepts and techniques, while not getting burned out. On the contrary, I became quite passionate about this field.

Also, I got in touch with a few of the finest meteorologists, climate scientists (IPCC appointed scientists) in India and abroad, who doubled as our faculty. Some interactions with them are enough to keep many of us inspired for the rest of our lives if one is passionate about this domain. One of them was my professor / guide Dr. Somnath Baidya Roy, a prominent meteorologist and a Princeton alumnus, who guided me through ridges and troughs of my academic career at IIT-D. 

At the same time, I got introduced to a vibrant cohort of batchmates and PhD students coming from various parts of this country carrying a variety of experiences (e.g., part-time candidates, who are senior officers at the ranks of Wg. Cdr. in the Indian Air Force) across multiple disciplines.

During this tenure, I along with my 3 batchmates decided to do an online summer internship on applied machine learning at IIT Kanpur. This curriculum re-introduced me to the actual applications of linear algebra, a key concept of the dreaded Pure Mathematics, using a more fun way of hands-on experience in coding.

All these interactions, support and guidance transformed my character from a shy / under-confident small town guy, placed at the bottom of a wait list to someone who is well-aware of his capabilities and more importantly, limitations in terms of knowledge base, skill sets etc.

This sweet and final chapter in my academic life concluded with me being the class topper at IIT-D and receiving of the “Ganga Devi and Khem Chand Memorial Award” for that achievement, which probably I would never have dreamt of.

The choice of my professional career was very much influenced by my academic journey. At the end of my tenure at IIT-D, I was fortunate enough to be uniquely equipped with a mix of working knowledge of atmospheric perils and statistical / mathematical techniques of data analysis along with fluency in programming languages. This amalgamation of skill sets brought me to the door of an otherwise unexplored universe (by my peers) of catastrophe modelling, a unique domain, peered by extremely smart cohorts (mostly dominated by PhDs), who are very well-versed in any of or more than one of specialities like structural engineering, hydrology, meteorology, data science, statistics, econometrics etc. 

How did you get your first break?

Although I got a couple of offers in hand from a couple of firms for roles like business analysis and energy trading, during our placement season in Dec 2020, I was not very sure about joining them. But as I received an offer from Willis Re (reinsurance arm of the broking firm Willis Towers Watson or WTW), in early 2021 through our faculty network, in one of their elite R&D teams on catastrophe modelling, I did some extensive research, and I was quite sure that this is probably something I’d like to pursue my professional career in.

A catastrophe model is a very heavy-duty stochastic model assessing catastrophe risk of single or multiple natural hazards in a particular region. These models are primarily used by the re/insurance industry to determine pricing of a risk from natural hazard undertaken by them. Apart from insurance industry, financiers, lenders like banks also utilize these model outputs to quantify the financial risk imposed by natural catastrophes onto the borrowers’ properties (for example) thus indirectly influencing the interest rate and assessing their payback capacity.

My primary role at Willis Re involved wearing a hat of an atmospheric peril (Tropical cyclones, extra tropical cyclones, severe convective storms like hailstorms, tornado etc.) specialist and evaluate / adjust vendor catastrophe models (from RMS, Verisk, CoreLogic etc.) and develop bespoke client specific catastrophe models for regions with no vendor coverage.

RMS (a Moody’s company), Verisk Analytics, and CoreLogic are major vendors/companies that provide data, analytics, and risk assessment services, primarily to the insurance and property industries, offering solutions for catastrophe modeling, risk management, property data, and real estate.

For example, RMS models allow users to simulate catastrophic events (like floods, fires, and earthquakes) and assess their financial impact on property exposures. 

But after a failed merger between WTW and Aon in Dec 2021, Willis Re was acquired by Gallagher Re and all the teams (including ours) from Willis Re shifted to Gallagher Re.

Tell us about your career path

The next few years at Gallagher Re, gave me an exponential learning curve by regularly interacting with colleagues smarter than me, learning newer insights about the components of various catastrophe models almost every other week, tweaking them externally in scientifically valid ways, interacting directly with clients and explaining crucial scientific concepts to them etc.

After spending about 3.5 years in this domain, I decided to expand my horizon and explore other applications of catastrophe modelling in a broader domain of climate risk (physical and transitional) adapted to the banking industry.

Shifting gears is never easy. It took me few months of trying, in addition to upgrading my purely scientific knowledge base with more information about regulatory requirements, learning about different transitional pathways prescribed by NGFS etc. and after multiple rejections from many big firms, finally, I got an offer from Morgan Stanley in their climate risk team within their prestigious Firm Risk Management (FRM) division, and I decided to join them.

The first thing I noticed after joining a big firm like MS is that their culture truly reflects the aura of a world-class firm. Everything was so systematic starting from onboarding to getting access to necessary information etc.

My primary role was to function as a scientific bridge between a team of senior project managers managing climate risk related projects, and a team of financial model developers (or in short “quants”). In a nutshell, my role was part quant, part project management.

E.g., one of these projects was aimed at developing long-term climate-stressed scenarios of physical risk for various parts of the world where MS has significant lending exposures. This involved gathering / developing climate stressed loss data for certain perils impacting a certain portfolio. This data partly came from catastrophe models and are projected to future climate scenarios, thus creating “climate stressed inputs” to the regular financial models, which assess the repaying capacity of a borrower by looking at a variety of financial metrics over a future temporal period.

Over the next few months, I had to wear multiple hats starting from developing methodology to reporting losses etc. As it progressed, I realized that this is sort of an experience I very much needed to have at some point in my career (otherwise I’d have regretted), but this is not something I’d pursue for the rest of my career.

Don’t know is it because of my age or career stage or is it because of my continuous appetite for improvement, I did not want to get settled yet and I thought to myself that probably I still have a few years in my hand to take up exciting roles, that are more technical and research oriented, that’ll even make me want to do office work during weekends (although not encouraged at all!).

During this time, I got in touch with a small start-up with less than 20 highly educated, skilled and motivated employees all together, majority of whom sacrificed their high paying secured MNC jobs to pursue a dream of making some significant contributions to the world of catastrophe modelling by solving some unique issues in the domain of renewable energy that no one in the industry ever dared to take up. And this idea was enough motivation for me to make the same sacrifice and join a company which is smaller than my team within FRM division at Morgan Stanley.

This is my story with Renew Risk, a company that has taken up a novel cause of providing holistic NatCat modelling solutions ( natural catastrophe) by quantification of scientifically accurate and industry accepted risk profiles of the renewable energy assets like offshore wind turbine farms located deep in the ocean or vast solar farms in the middle of nowhere and is currently on its way to become an industry leader in this domain. 

I currently work as a primary catastrophe model developer for an upcoming model (confidential!) at Renew Risk.

What were some of the challenges you faced? How did you address them?

All my challenges stem from my decision to pursue  a career in mathematics.

Challenge 1: I came to realize that perhaps, I’m more of an engineering guy than a pure science guy. Hence, I had to finish my MSc in Applied Mathematics before looking for options for further higher studies in engineering disciplines (MTech) that my MSc degree allowed. 

Challenge 2: Although I got a couple of offers in hand from a couple of firms for roles like business analysis and energy trading, during our placement season in Dec 2020, I was not very sure about joining them. I wanted to combine my interest in mathematical modelling with addressing real world challenges

Where do you work now? What problems do you solve?

I currently work as a Catastrophe Model developer at Renew Risk.

I solve the problem of getting risk assessments done with regard to natural catastrophes, for renewable energy assets.

This role requires in-depth understanding of catastrophe models, proficiency with statistical methods, capacity to efficiently handle big data, familiarity with key concepts in the data science domain, familiarity with cloud servers (e.g., AWS S3), and efficient codebase handling. Understanding of key meteorological concepts is preferred to have.

A typical day includes lots of brainstorming, implementing ideas, validating results and repeating them.

Solving a less explored challenge, learning something new every day is what I love the most about my job.

How does your work benefit society? 

As the world transitions to renewable sources of energy as a primary source, there is a pressing need to not only safeguard renewable energy assets but also quantify their risk exposure to natural calamities which will help financial intermediaries, banks, investors and energy providers understand and address their risk exposure. That’s what we do by quantifying those risks.

Tell us an example of a specific memorable work you did that is very close to you!

A project that I did in the initial months at MS, is something that will remain memorable to me, not just because of the innovation that this project brought to the table within a very short span of time but also due to the previous NatCat R&D experience that I could swiftly apply to this project, which led to an exponential growth in visibility among very senior people within the FRM division. As mentioned earlier, it was about developing long-term physical risk metrics for regions with high MS exposure that required defining key metrics and developing innovative ideas about projection of these metrics over a long-term window in the future, under a warming climate scenario, in a way which is scientifically plausible. I was quite fortunate that my familiarity with catastrophe models played a key role in this project, and it helped me recapitulate so many niche statistical concepts that I had long forgotten. Ultimately, this project was quite beneficial for the firm as well as for my personal growth in terms of knowledge and visibility.

Your advice to students based on your experience?

Even if you face setbacks in your life (both in academic or professional), do remember that there are always stories of a bigger failure than yours and those who do not lose hope and work hard toward achieving their goals, do achieve their deserved success (with interest rate). Their success stories are even sweeter than those who did not fail even once.

Never take any decision in haste. Many times it so happens that what we think we like at a particular point of time in our career may not suit us in the long run.

Always keep an open mind while choosing a career path. Assess every opportunity in front of you carefully. Weigh one choice against another by listing the pros and cons. If you don’t know everything about the opportunity in front of you, it’s fine. In today’s world we are blessed to have been accompanied by AI. Make use of it (but not blindly!). Who knows a very less explored career path might bring fruits to your life.

Embrace AI. Neither get over dependent nor defiant on AI. Use AI to the limit of your requirements, nothing more or nothing less.

If you wish to join a start-up, remember to assess its operation and problem-solving objectives very carefully. Start-ups are like high risk, high reward stocks. If you have an appetite for them, go for it.

Future Plans?

I do not like to make plans for a very long-time horizon in the future beyond the next few years. I wish to keep my plans dynamic, depending upon the situation. For the next few years at least, I wish to continue with Renew Risk and be part of the growth journey.