Derman, who first came to the U.S. at age 21, in 1966, is currently a professor at Columbia University and Director of its program in financial engineering. Until recently he was also the Head of Risk and a partner at KKR Prisma Capital Partners, a fund of funds. His book "My Life as a Quant: Reflections on Physics and Finance", published by Wiley in September 2004, was one of Business Week's top ten books of the year for 2004. In 2011, he published "Models.Behaving.Badly", a book contrasting financial models with the theories of hard science, and also containing some autobiographical material.