Nicole El Karoui is Professor of Applied Mathematics at both University of Paris VI and Ecole Polytechnique, France. She is a well known for her many contributions on probabilistic aspects of stochastic control and their applications to partially observable optimization problems. In 1989, after a sabbatical semester in a bank, she started working on various mathematical problems in finance.

She has been the leader in many fields of mathematical finance and related stochastic analysis, most notable are: backward stochastic differential equations, dynamic risk measure, portfolio insurance, indifference pricing. She also made important contributions in interest rate models, stochastic volatilities and calibration, and directed many PhD dissertations in these areas.