Timothy Klassen

Dr. Timothy Klassen (CEO) is an expert in fast and robust pricing and calibration methods, as well as volatility arbitrage and automated risk management, with over 16 years of experience in quantitative finance.

Before founding Vola Dynamics LLC in 2016, he built the options analytics infrastructure and quant team at Getco LLC from the ground up, starting in 2008. Getco was one of very few successful new equity options market makers post-penny pilot. He started his career in finance as an equity derivatives quant in Emanuel Derman's team at Goldman Sachs in 2000. In 2003 he had the opportunity to build the equity derivatives quant team and modeling library at Wachovia Securities from scratch, covering all quantitative aspects of the ED business.

Besides discovering the first classes of modern, asymptotically arbitrage-free implied volatility curves, Tim is best known for designing the (new) VIX, the widely quoted fear gauge (the "new VIX" the CBOE started disseminating in Sep. 2003 was based on a proposal by Tim, Sandy Rattray, and Devesh Shah, then all at Goldman Sachs). He is an authority on modeling and fitting volatility surfaces. He received his Ph.D. in particle physics from the University of Chicago.