Department of Finance and Risk Engineering

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Peter Paul Carr: Department Chair
Barry Blecherman: Deputy Department Chair

Mission

The mission of the Department of Finance and Risk Engineering is to create world-class research and educational programs that provide students with superior training and skills that bridge theory and practice in today’s cutting-edge financial services industry and its many associated professions.

The Department

The Department of Finance and Risk Engineering (FRE) is a diversified research and degree granting department - the largest of its kind in the U.S. with approximately 300 students and the largest alumni base in the world. The Department provides a multi-faceted education through the MS in Financial Engineering program and an undergraduate Minor in Finance.

The department pursues intensive research and an educational program in global finance as well as interdisciplinary financial research relating to environmental issues, cyber security, urban and civil infrastructure, and other topics dependent on important financial considerations. Our program is recognized as being at the forefront of research in the financial field with faculty from around the world who are highly ranked by the significance of their contributions. The department is staffed by a number of leading academics and practitioners, and boasts a number of outstanding affiliated professors and cutting-edge traders, hedge fund managers and academics turned practitioners by the lure of Wall Street. This combination of talent, theoretically and practically-based, national and international, provides a first-rate education embedded in answering the real needs of the financial services sector that recognizes the continuous growth of finance, financial insurance and risk engineering, technology, financial engineering and management in an increasingly global world.

The department’s educational and MS degree-granting programs, research and extracurricular activities seek to bridge theory and practice and meet the many and complex challenges that the financial engineering professions are confronted with. The department’s curriculum combines a rigorous vision of economics, finance, applied quant finance, actuarial science and financial technology in their theoretical and practical setting in a global world and global financial markets. In addition, the department provides interdisciplinary opportunities to combine studies, such as computer science, mathematics and engineering with financial management and technology and risk engineering.

Graduates may assume diversified employment positions in the many facets that make up the financial engineering profession. Trading desks, hedge fund and investment managers, CFOs, quantitative professionals, insurance firms, financial technology managers as well as financial and specialized risk managers define the broad set of professions that are open to NYU Tandon School of Engineering’s graduates in financial engineering. The department regularly adapts and updates the program to reflect the changing industry, giving students the necessary competitive edge in the job market. Top employers regularly recruit our graduates for the superior training they have to lead at the forefront of the field. Additionally, the department maintains strong connections with international partners, which include distinguished universities and institutions in locations such as France, Italy and Israel. The globalmperspective students gain and the relationships they develop exponentially expand their options for the future.

Students have opportunities to acquire new insights and build practical solutions to the emerging challenges in the ever-changing world of finance through local and global industry collaborations. Through the Extreme Risk Initiative, the department fosters active collaboration in the comprehensive analysis and assessment of risks as applied to derivatives, credit risk, default models in finance, black swans and rare events finance, global finance and more. Students gain the skills to recognize patterns and develop safeguards when dealing with such events as collapsing markets, influential environmental issues or other major disasters.

The Profession

Financial engineering is driven by financial practice to bridge means and ends and to reconcile the theoretical foundations of financial economics with the reality of financial markets. Finance is about money and therefore, all problems that can be transformed to a real or to a synthetic financial money framework can profit by the extent to which money is used and exchanged. It is in such a perspective, that many economic and engineering problems can be conceived as “financial engineering problems.” This conception of financial engineering underpins the NYU Tandon School of Engineering programs in finance. In this spirit, our goal and objectives pertain to trading, speculating, investing, pricing and corporate and risk management but also to pricing and managing the risks of infrastructure, the environment and business management. In this sense, financial engineering as with all technology and scientific based professions is a “work in progress,” whose purpose is to present and communicate with practitioners and financial engineering students to better prepare their entering the world of finance. We meet the challenges of financial markets-in analysis, pricing, trading and investing-for technology managers and computational finance engineers in fast-moving, highly rewarding careers that create value enabled by finance, technology and computational mathematics.

Contact

Department of Finance and Risk Engineering
NYU Tandon School of Engineering
12 MetroTech Center, 26th Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11201
engineering.fre@nyu.edu
Tel: 646.997.3279
Fax: 646.997.3355
Web: http://engineering.nyu.edu/academics/departments/finance

Degrees Offered

Master of Science

• Financial Engineering, M.S.

Undergraduate Minor

• Finance Minor

Faculty

Charles S. Tapiero

Topfer Distinguished Professor of Financial Engineering

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering

Andrew Papanicolaou

Assistant Professor

Zhaoxia Xu

Assistant Professor

Barry Blecherman

Deputy Department Chair and Industry Professor

Agnes Tourin

Industry Assistant Professor

Segolene Dessertine-Panhard

Post-Doctoral Fellow

Unurjargal Nyambuu

Post-Doctoral Fellow

Adjunct Faculty

Sassan Alizadeh

Lucas Bernard

Paul Biederman

Raphaele Chappe

Jierong Cheng

Gregg Fisher

Roy Freedman

Evan Gallagher

Sebastien Galy

Saar Golde

Michael Hayes

Benjamin Hoff

Andrey Itkin

Mirela Ivan

Ashish Kohli

Norris Larrymore

Brian R. Lessing

Victor Makarov

Naresh Malhotra

Shlomo Mandel

Ingrid Marshall

Asha Matthei

Warren Matthei

Pape Ndiaye

Frederick Novometsky

Jerzy Pawlowski

Antonio Pepenella

Daniel Rodriguez

Maurice Rubinraut

Anatoly Schmidt

Frederic Siboulet

Ron Slivka

Song Tang

Daniel Totouom-Tangho

Edward Dean Weinberger

Jason Yarmish

Anne Zissu

International Faculty Affiliates

• Professor Alain Bensoussan, Hong Kong University and the University of Texas, Dallas
• Professor Sergio Bianchi, The University of Cassino, Italy
• Professor Ron Kennett, University of Turin
• Professor Konstantin Kogan, Bar-Man University
• Professor Bertand Munier, The Maurice Allais Foundation, France
• Professor Stylianos Perrakis, John Molson School of Business, Concordia University, Canada
• Professor Bouchra Rahmouni Benhida, University Hassan I, Morocco
• Dr. Lorne Switzer, John Molson School of Business, Concordia University, Canada
• Professor Mina Teicher, Bar Ilan University, The US-Israel Bi National Science Foundation
• Professor Pierre Vallois, University of Lorraine, France

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