This afternoon the University Council, after considering the views of the Academic Senate, appointed Prof. Alex Weissensteiner to succeed Prof. Paolo Lugli as Rector of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. Prof. Weissensteiner was selected as the new Rector following an international selection process involving more than 40 applications from external and internal candidates.

Born in Bozen-Bolzano, Prof. Alex Weissensteiner has extensive research and teaching experience both in Italy and abroad. After completing his PhD at the University of Innsbruck, he has worked as a Contract Professor of Portfolio Management and Financial Risk Management at the University of Liechtenstein since 2012. In addition, he has held the position of Full Professor of Financial Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark in Copenhagen since the 2013-2014 academic year. He is currently a Professor of Quantitative Finance at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (Faculty of Economics), where he also holds the position of Vice-Rector for Studies. Previously, he was Vice-Dean for Studies at the Faculty of Economics (2018-20) and Director of the Bachelor of Economics and Management from 2015 to 2020. Between 2016 and 2020, he was the coordinator of the unibz Quality Committee.

As a Professor at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Weissensteiner is teaching courses in Mathematical Finance, Financial Risk Management and Derivatives. His research interests are in the fields of asset allocation, and theoretical and empirical asset pricing. He published in leading outlets such as e.g. the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, the Journal of Financial Markets, the Journal of Empirical Finance, and the Journal of Banking and Finance.

Prof. Ulrike Tappeiner, President of unibz, expresses her confidence in the choice of Prof. Weissensteiner as the new Rector: “The Free University of Bozen-Bolzano has succeeded in finding, from a broad international shortlist of candidates, a Rector who knows both the University and its social and economic environment very well. He is therefore ideally suited not only to represent unibz internationally and nationally but also to anchor the University even more firmly in our region”.

(zil)