Mission Statement

  • To build the premier quantitative Vortex-of-Innovation
  • To create an efficient network for new quants and seasoned investment professionals
  • To foster long-term mentor/mentee relationships

Jim Liew, Ph.D., CEO

Dr. Liew obtained his Ph.D. in Finance from Columbia Business School and has spent many years within the hedge fund industry. Dr. Liew has a passion for teaching Statistical Arbitrage and Topics in Hedge Fund Strategies as an Adjunct Professor at Columbia's Financial Engineering Department and NYU Stern School of Business, respectively. Dr. Liew has previously worked at a large macro futures fund and a high-frequency NYC-based statistical arbitrage fund, where he built, back-tested, and implemented systematic strategies. Dr. Liew has extensive business experience within the hedge fund-of-funds industry as well. Such experiences include: starting a successful fund-of-funds business that eventually spun out of The Carlyle Group, managing the World Bank's pension fund direct investments into hedge funds, and sourcing hedge funds and creating institutional investment products for a managed account platform. Dr. Liew has published numerous papers with regards to hedge fund investing and quantitative investment strategies. He currently spends his time: building "better" hedge fund benchmark indices, consulting and advising individuals / institutions on alternative investment opportunities. Dr. Liew serves on the CAIA Hedge Fund Curriculum Committee.

Ahmad Ajakh, Ph.D., Chief Strategist

Dr. Ajakh has made significant contributions to the hedge fund industry. As Head of Research at Stonebrook Capital he was responsible for managing the quantitative financial models, research and portfolio construction in currencies and hedge fund replication programs. Prior to joining Stonebrook, Dr. Ajakh was Director of Research at Treesdale Partners, a Fixed Income Fund, where he was responsible for risk and quantitative portfolio analysis. Prior to that Dr. Ajakh was a Senior Analyst and Vice-President at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, where he was in charge of selecting and monitoring quantitatively driven hedge funds. While at Morgan Stanley Dr. Ajakh also designed equity market neutral strategies in the Process Driven Strategies group. Dr. Ajakh began his career in Finance as a Research Analyst at AXA Investment Management, New York in 1999, where he was in charge of portfolio risk analytics and performance analysis. Dr. Ajakh holds a Ph.D. in Physics with highest distinctions from the University of Nantes, France.

Jim Gatheral, Ph.D., Professor of Mathematics at Baruch's MFE Program

Dr. Gatheral was involved in all of the major derivative product areas as book-runner, risk manager, and quantitative analyst in London, Tokyo and New York, in a career in the financial industry that spanned over 25 years. Between 1996 and 2005, he led the Equity Quantitative Analytics Group at Merrill Lynch. His current research focus is on volatility modeling and modeling equity market micro-structure for algorithmic trading. Dr. Gatheral is a frequent speaker at both practitioner and academic conferences around the world. His bestselling book, "The Volatility Surface: A Practitioner's Guide", has become a standard reference for practitioners, academics and students alike.

Marco Avellaneda, Ph.D., Professor of Mathematics and Director of Financial Mathematics at NYU's Courant Institute

Dr. Avellaneda began his Wall Street career as Vice-President in the Morgan Stanley Derivative Products Group. Subsequently, he was Portfolio Manager in equity volatility Strategies at Gargoyle Strategic Investments LLC, Head of Volatility Arbitrage at Capital Fund Management, where he managed the Nimbus Fund, and, more recently, Portfolio Manager in quantitative equity strategies at the Galleon Group in New York. He is known in academic finance as the inventor of the Uncertain Volatility model and for his work on the Weighted Monte Carlo algorithm and the theory of Dispersion Trading, as well as for several other papers in quantitative finance and derivatives. Dr. Avellaneda has extensive experience in the fields of derivatives, quantitative strategies in equities and volatility trading from the point of view of hedge funds and Wall Street firms. He is also in the editorial boards of Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, the International Journal for Theoretical and Applied Finance and Quantitative Finance. He has authored the textbook Quantitative Modelling of Derivative Securities: From Theory to Practice, and edited several other books and conference proceedings.

Henry Jones, Ph.D., Founder of Iron View Capital

An expert in automation, wireless communication and designing user-friendly technology, Dr.Jones has created new products in the robotics, defense, agriculture and telemetry markets. He also founded a successful venture-backed satellite image analysis company and a non-profit technology integrator for humanitarian relief organizations. He has been a frequent speaker and writer on a number of high-technology topics.
Dr. Jones received a doctorate in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University while conducting research at Stanford's Aerospace Robotics Laboratory. He also obtained a master's degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford and a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Mississippi.

Sumit Kumar Jha, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Central Florida.

Dr. Jha is a tenure-track Assistant Professor with the Computer Science Department at the University of Central Florida, Orlando. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, where he worked on developing algorithms for validation and synthesis of complex stochastic systems using high level behavioral specifications. Before joining Carnegie Mellon, Dr. Jha graduated with B.Tech (Hons.) in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. His current research interests include automated verification and synthesis of stochastic and hybrid systems with emphasis on applications to computational finance and biochemical modeling. Dr. Jha has also worked on more traditional formal validation and machine learning problems at Microsoft Research, General Motors and INRIA, France. Dr. Jha is an author of several papers accepted at very selective international conferences and journals in computer science, and is a reviewer for prestigious publications and conferences including Theoretical Computer Science, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, ACM TECS, Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence, Microprocessors and Microsystems, and IEEE Computers.

Leonid Frants, Ph.D., President and Founder OneMarketData

Before founding OneMarketData in 2004, Dr. Frants accumulated more than 15 years of financial software and data management experience building key analytical infrastructures for the proprietary Quantitative Trading and Program Trading businesses of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. He joined Goldman Sachs in 1996 and joined Goldman's Equities Statistical Arbitrage group in 1998, where he contributed to developing trading strategies and implemented backtesting frameworks. Dealing with the stringent historical data quality needs of quantitative strategy research led him to conceive and build a dedicated team to build the comprehensive equities data management and data analytics solution which ultimately grew to serve the global needs for the entire equities division. Prior to joining Goldman Sachs, Dr. Frants developed scalable client portfolio analytics solutions at Morgan Stanley. Dr. Frants received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University, and degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Jasmina Hasanhodzic, Ph.D., Research Scientist AlphaSimplex Group, LLC

Dr. Hasanhodzic is a research scientist at AlphaSimplex Group, LLC, where she develops quantitative investment strategies and benchmarks. She received her Ph.D. from MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Her works on alternative market betas and technical analysis have appeared in leading publications such as the Journal of Investment Management, and she is the co-author with Andrew Lo of the books "The Heretics of Finance" and "The Evolution of Technical Analysis" (forthcoming). Jasmina serves on the board of directors of the Market Technicians Association Educational Foundation.

Ryan Roberts, Quantitative Strategist

Mr. Roberts has researched, built, back-tested, optimized, and implemented quantitative investment strategies for Alpha Quant Club; emphasizing the application of asset allocation and portfolio optimization techniques to common Hedge-Fund/Statistical Arbitrage strategies. Mr. Roberts is currently a graduate student at Columbia University, completing a Masters in Operations Research where his studies have primarily focused on Financial Engineering applications within the field. This degree builds upon his strong quantitative and technical background including a previous Masters in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University and numerous research positions held in academia. He holds a Bachelor degree from University of California at Berkeley in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Georges Galtier,Quantitative Strategist

Mr. Galtier has 11 years of experience in the alternative investment industry. He was the Head of Alternative Managers at Calyon in New York City (Investment Bank of Credit Agricole). Mr. Galtier designed the first structured product linked to Hedge Funds and successfully developed the US alternatives market for Calyon. Prior to that, he was Head of Derivatives Trading at Calyon NY managing a book of $3 billion in alternatives investments. Mr. Galtier holds a Master's in Theoretical Physics from the University of Montpellier, France and a Master's in Finance from ESCP-EAP Paris.

Tejpal Chadha, Chief Technology Officer

Mr. Chadha is a seasoned technology and business entrepreneur with deep experiences in delivery and development of software and systems. He excels at delivering highly scalable and resilient enterprise solutions for storing and analyzing high volume streaming data. After eight years at Intel leading the Pentium and Intel 64 bit efforts, Mr. Chadha started Vhayu Technologies as CEO/CTO. Vhayu enables large financial institutions to employ real-time analytics on streaming data thus generating trades within the milli-second frequency. Last year Vhayu was sold to Reuters. Currently, Mr. Chadha spends his time as CTO and Partner of Nirvana Financial Solutions, where he developed their offerings of real-time engines to help manage trading, compliance and portfolios. These products are currently offered to prime brokers and hedge funds. Additionally, Mr. Chadha has worked with a number of hedge funds to develop their algos and low latency infrastructure to support high frequency trading. Mr. Chadha holds a MS in Computer Engineering University of Michigan and a BS in Electronics Engineering BHU-IIT, Banaras, India. He is a member of IEEE and The Indus Entrepreneurs.

Joy Pathak, Quantitative Strategist

Mr. Pathak is responsible for research, development, evaluation and co-ordination of quantitative strategies for Alpha Quant Club. He is a graduate student at Baruch College-CUNY in their Masters in Financial Engineering program. Mr. Pathak comes from a strong quantitative background with a degree in Mechanical Engineering from University of Windsor in Canada. He had also spent time doing Ph.D. research and course work at University of Wisconsin-Madison in Materials Engineering until he left to join the financial world. Mr. Pathak has also worked in various engineering research and managerial positions at ExxonMobil Oil Sands (Syncrude), General Motors, Siemens, and Nemak. He has also published peer reviewed papers in the Computational Fluid Dynamics and Structural Dynamics domains.

Feng Shi, Quantitative Strategist

Mr. Shi has researched, built, back-tested, evaluated, and implemented quantitative strategies, especially statistical arbitrage strategies for Alpha Quant Club. He has also used and enhanced a complex literate programming system to dynamically document matlab code. Mr. Shi is currently a graduate student at Columbia University, concentrating his study on Financial Engineering. He comes from a strong quantitative background with a physics PhD fellowship from City University of New York, spending time doing PhD research and course work in Applied Physics until he left to focus on the quantitative finance field. He has his Bachelor degree from University of Science and Technology of China.

Nick Cai, Quantitative Strategist

Mr. Cai is currently researching, back-testing and evaluating FX quantitative trading strategies for Alpha Quant Club. Mr. Cai is a current graduate student at Rutgers University, majoring in Mathematical Finance. He has completed a project on static and dynamic hedging of single barrier option and is currently working on another project on high frequency forecasting model. He also gained industrial experience from HSBC's Trading Desk, Bank of East Asia and Tullet Prebon Sitico. Mr. Cai received his Bachelor degree in Applied Mathematics with Summa Cum Laude from Western Michigan University. He also passed the Financial Risk Management Full Level Exam.

Bing Li, Quantitative Strategist

Mr. Li is currently a graduate student pursuing a master degree in Math Finance at Rutgers University. Mr. Li is interested in building quantitative trading strategy and portfolio construction. He did an internship in HonorVerus Research LLC, an alternative investment management firm that specializes in trading futures. Prior to that, he completed a Hedging Strategies Project for an European style vanilla option with a jump process via Monte Carlo simulation. Mr. Li obtained his Bachelor's degree in Financial Engineering in University of Science & Technology Beijing.

Bartt C. Kellermann, Founder of Battle of the Quants

Mr. Kellerman is currently the Founder and CEO of Global Capital Acquisition (GCA). GCA, founded in 2002, is a consulting firm assisting Investors to find smart, innovative and sound investments ideas in the alternative investment space. Global Capital Acquisition also manages the Battle of the Quants meetings in the United States, Western Europe and Asia. Mr. Kellermann is a regular speaker at hedge fund conferences internationally and has appeared on MSNBC and Bloomberg TV reflecting on the current state of the hedge fund industry. Mr. Kellermann is a Registered Representative with the NASD and has an MBA from the Monterey Institute of International Studies and an undergraduate degree from Gettysburg College.