David Li
David X. Li ( born Nanjing, China in the 1960s) is a Chinese-born Canadian quantitative analyst and actuary who pioneered the use of Gaussian copula models for the pricing of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) in the early 2000s. The "Financial Times" has called him "the world’s most influential actuary", while in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008–2009, to which Li's model has been partly credited to blame, his model has been called a "recipe for disaster" in the hands of those who did not fully understand his research and misapplied it. Widespread application of simplified Gaussian copula models to financial products such as securities may have contributed to the global financial crisis of 2008–2009. David Li is currently an adjunct professor at the University of Waterloo in the Statistics and Actuarial Sciences department.