Thomas Mikosch has been professor at the Laboratory of Actuarial Mathematics of the University of Copenhagen since January 2001. Before this, he held positions in Dresden (Germany), Wellington (New Zealand) and Groningen (Netherlands). His special interests are applied probability theory and stochastic processes. Over the last few years his research has focused on extremal events in finance, insurance and telecommunications. His earlier very successful book, written jointly with Paul Embrechts and Claudia Kluppelberg, Modelling Extremal Events for Finance and Insurance (1997), is also published by Springer.