phd quantitative finance

SPECIAL QUALITIES OF STONY BROOK QUANTITATIVE FINANCE PROGRAM.

Most of the Applied Mathematics faculty teaching quantitative finance courses have extensive experience building quantitative trading systems on Wall Street.

Because of their Wall Street backgrounds, our faculty are able to place many of their QF students in  internships  during the summer and the academic year at hedge funds and major investment companies. Few other QF programs offer internships.

There is limited use of adjunct faculty who come to campus one or two evenings a week after work.

The Center for Quantitative Finance has a distinguished advisory board consisting of senior Wall Street executives and leading academics in quantitative finance, including Robert Merton who received the Nobel Prize in Economics for laying the foundations for modern quantitative finance.

The Stony Brook Quantitative Finance program is unique among mathematical sciences departments in its very practical focus on 'alpha generation', Wall Street term for trading strategies for making money. Courses are centered around projects where students use real tick data to analyze and predict the performance of individual stocks and commodities, market indices and derivatives. Also, Stony Brook is one of a small number of quantitative finance programs offering PhD as well as MS training. Our PhDs have taken positions both in Wall Street firms and in university quantitative finance programs. For more information about our quantitative finance courses and faculty, see  QF Courses  and  QF People .

Course Requirements for the Quantitative Finance Track   (students admitted PRIOR to Fall 2015)

The standard program of study for the M.S. degree specializing in quantitative finance consists of:

Quantitative Finance Track Electives (students must take at least  2 elective courses  to achieve at least  36  graduate credits along with the required courses):   AMS 515  Case Studies in Quantitative Finance AMS 519  Internship in Quantitative Finance AMS 522  Bayesian Methods in Finance  AMS 523  Mathematics of High Frequency Finance AMS 550  Stochastic Models AMS 553  Simulation and Modeling AMS 572  Data Analysis AMS 578  Regression Theory AMS 586  Time Series AMS 595  Fundamentals of Computing (1 credit) AMS, FIN, ECO or CS course approved by the AMS Graduate Program Director as well as the Graduate Program Director of the Corresponding Department 

Typical Course Sequence for Quantitative Finance Research Track First Semester: AMS  507 ,  510 ,  511 ,  513 Second Semester: AMS  512 ,  517 , FIN 539, elective Third Semester: AMS  514 ,  516 ,  518 , elective

Course Requirements for the Quantitative Finance Track   (students admitted Fall 2015 and thereafter) Required (core) courses for the Quantitative Finance Track:

AMS 507  Introduction to Probability AMS 510  Analytical Methods for Applied Mathematics and Statistics AMS 511  Foundations of Quantitative Finance AMS 512  Portfolio Theory AMS 513  Financial Derivatives and Stochastic Calculus AMS 514  Computational Finance AMS 516  Statistical Methods in Finance AMS 517  Quantitative Risk Management AMS 518  Advanced Stochastic Models, Risk Assessment, and Portfolio Optimization AMS 572  Data Analysis FIN 539 Investment Analysis

Quantitative Finance Track Electives (students must take at least  1  elective course  to achieve at least  36  graduate credits along with the required courses):   AMS 515  Case Studies in Quantitative Finance AMS 522  Bayesian Methods in Finance  AMS 523  Mathematics of High Frequency Finance AMS 600  Socially Responsible Investing AMS 601  Risk Management and Business Risk Control in BRIC Countries One course in Statistics (AMS 570-586) One course in Operations Research (AMS 540-556)

Typical Course Sequence for Quantitative Finance Research Track First Semester: AMS  507 ,  510 ,  511 ,  572   Second Semester: AMS  512 ,  513 ,  517 , FIN 539 Third Semester: AMS  514 ,  516 ,  518 Fourth Semester: Elective(s)

Quantitative Finance Opportunities for Applied Mathematics Graduate Students in Other Tracks Any strong student (3.5+ GPA in first-semester core courses) in another track may enroll in AMS 511, Foundations in Quantitative Finance.  Selected students, with the permission of the Director of the Center for Quantitative Finance, may take additional quantitative finance courses and are eligible to earn an  Advanced Certificate in Quantitative Finance . You must formally apply for the secondary certificate program prior to taking the required courses. Only a maximum of six credits taken prior to enrolling in the certificate program may be used towards the requirements. Please note that credits used toward your primary program may not be used toward the certificate program. The 15-credit advanced certificate requires AMS 511, 512, 513, one additional QF elective, and one additional Applied Mathematics course chosen with an advisor’s approval. To apply down load the registration form here:

http://www.grad.sunysb.edu/pdf/forms/New_Forms/Permission%20to%20Enroll%20in%20a% 20Secondary%20Program%20-%20Certificates%20Only.pdf

Gainful employment disclosure information for our Quantitative Finance Program: http://www.stonybrook.edu/finaid/ge/quan_finance_ge.html

The Mathematical and Computational Finance Program at Stanford University (“MCF”) is one of the oldest and most established programs of its kind in the world. Starting out in the late 1990’s as an interdisciplinary financial mathematics research group, at a time when “quants” started having a greater impact on finance in particular, the program formally admitted masters students starting in 1999. The current MCF program was relaunched under the auspices of the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering in the Stanford School of Engineering in 2014 to better align with changes in industry and to broaden into areas of financial technology in particular. We are excited to remain at the cutting edge of innovation in finance while carrying on our long tradition of excellence.

The MCF Program is designed to have smaller cohorts of exceptional students with diverse interests and viewpoints, and prepare them for impactful roles in finance. We are characterized by our cutting edge curriculum marrying traditional financial mathematics and core fundamentals, with an innovative technical spirit unique to Stanford with preparation in software engineering, data science and machine learning as well as the hands-on practical coursework which is the hallmark skill-set for leaders in present day finance.

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Chicago Booth has long been recognized for its PhD in finance. Our finance faculty—which includes Nobel laureates Douglas W. Diamond, Eugene F. Fama, and Lars P. Hansen—sets the course for research in all areas of the field.

As a finance PhD student at Chicago Booth, you’ll join a community that encourages you to think independently.

Taking courses at Booth and in the university’s Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics, you will gain a solid foundation in all aspects of economics and finance--from the factors that determine asset prices to how firms and individuals make financial decisions. Following your coursework, you will develop your research in close collaboration with faculty and your fellow students. Reading groups and workshops with faculty, student-led brown-bag seminars, and conferences provide many opportunities to learn from others.

The Finance PhD Program also offers the Joint Program in Financial Economics , which is run by Chicago Booth and the Department of Economics in the Division of the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago.

Our Distinguished Finance Faculty

Chicago Booth finance faculty are leading researchers who also build strong relationships with doctoral students, collaborate on new ideas, and connect students with powerful career opportunities.

Francesca Bastianello

Assistant Professor of Finance and Liew Family Junior Faculty Fellow, Fama Faculty Fellow

Emanuele Colonnelli

Professor of Finance and Entrepreneurship

George M. Constantinides

Leo Melamed Professor of Finance

Douglas W. Diamond

Merton H. Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance

Eugene F. Fama

Robert R. McCormick Distinguished Service Professor of Finance

Niels Gormsen

Neubauer Family Associate Professor of Finance and Fama Faculty Fellow

Lars Hansen

David Rockefeller Distinguished Service Professor The University of Chicago Departments of Economics, Statistics and the Booth School of Business

John C. Heaton

Joseph L. Gidwitz Professor of Finance

Steven Neil Kaplan

Neubauer Family Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance and Kessenich E.P. Faculty Director at the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Anil Kashyap

Stevens Distinguished Service Professor of Economics and Finance

Ralph S.J. Koijen

AQR Capital Management Distinguished Service Professor of Finance and Fama Faculty Fellow

Professor of Finance and Fama Faculty Fellow

Stefan Nagel

Fama Family Distinguished Service Professor of Finance

Scott Nelson

Assistant Professor of Finance and Cohen and Keenoy Faculty Scholar

Pascal Noel

Neubauer Family Professor of Finance and Kathryn and Grant Swick Faculty Scholar

Lubos Pastor

Charles P. McQuaid Distinguished Service Professor of Finance and Robert King Steel Faculty Fellow

Raghuram G. Rajan

Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance

Bruce Lindsay Distinguished Service Professor of Economics and Public Policy

Quentin Vandeweyer

Assistant Professor of Finance and Fama Faculty Fellow

Pietro Veronesi

Deputy Dean for Faculty and Chicago Board of Trade Professor of Finance

Robert W. Vishny

Myron S. Scholes Distinguished Service Professor of Finance and Neubauer Faculty Director of the Davis Center

Michael Weber

Associate Professor of Finance

Anthony Lee Zhang

Luigi Zingales

Robert C. McCormack Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance

Professor of Economics and Finance

Alumni Success

Graduates of the Stevens Doctoral Program go on to successful careers in prominent institutions of higher learning, leading financial institutions, government, and beyond.

Sangmin (Simon) Oh, PhD '24

Assistant Professor of Business, Finance Division Columbia Business School, Columbia University Simon's research interests are asset pricing, investments, and insurance. He studies how institutional frictions impact the pricing of risk, focusing on market dynamics and investor behavior and often leveraging machine learning tools. Simon's dissertation area is in financial economics.

Shohini Kundu, MBA '20, PhD '21

Assistant Professor of Finance UCLA Anderson School of Management, University of California, Los Angeles Shohini Kundu's research lies in financial intermediation and macroeconomics, security design and externalities of financial contracts, and emerging market finance. Her dissertation area is in finance.

Jane (Jian) Li, PhD '21

Assistant Professor of Business, Finance Division Columbia Business School, Columbia University Jane's research lies at the intersection of macroeconomics and finance. She is particularly interested in how financial intermediaries affect the real economy and how different types of financial institutions can contribute to financial instability. Her dissertation area is in financial economics.

Spotlight on Research

The pages of Chicago Booth Review regularly highlight the research findings of finance faculty and PhD students.

A Brief History of Finance and My Life at Chicago

Chicago Booth’s Eugene F. Fama describes the serendipitous events that led him to Chicago, and into his monumental career in academic finance.

Climate-Policy Pronouncements Boost 'Brown' Stocks

It was a dramatic example of how White House communications on climate policy can affect asset prices, according to Washington University in St. Louis’s William Cassidy, a recent graduate of Booth’s PhD Program.

With Business Loans Harder to Get, Private Debt Funds Are Stepping In

It’s become harder for many prospective borrowers to access capital. But private debt funds have stepped in to fill the gap, according to Joern Block (Trier University), Booth PhD candidate Young Soo Jang, Booth’s Steve Kaplan, and Trier’s Anna Schulze.

Too Many 'Shadow Banks' Can Limit Overall Access to Credit

While go-betweens can benefit the broader economy by smoothing the flow of credit, there are now probably too many links in the credit chain, argue Zhiguo He and Jian Li (Booth PhD graduate).

A Network of Support

Chicago Booth is home to several interdisciplinary research centers that offer funding for student work, host workshops and conferences, and foster a strong research community.

Fama-Miller Center for Research in Finance Tasked with pushing the boundaries of research in finance, the Fama-Miller Center provides institutional structure and support for researchers in the field.

Becker Friedman Institute for Economics Bringing together researchers from the entire Chicago economics community, the Becker Friedman Institute fosters novel insights on the world’s most difficult economic problems.

Center for Research in Security Prices CRSP maintains one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive stock market databases. Since 1963, it has been a valued resource for businesses, government, and scholars.

Kent A. Clark Center for Global Markets Enhancing the understanding of business and financial market globalization, the Clark Center positions Chicago Booth as a thought leader in the understanding of ever-changing markets and improves financial and economic decision-making around the world.

George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State Dedicated to examining issues at the intersection of politics and the economy, the Stigler Center supports research by PhD students and others who are interested in the political, economic, and cultural obstacles to better working markets.

Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation Committed to making the world more equitable and sustainable, the Rustandy Center works to solve complex social and environmental problems. The center’s student support includes fellowships, research funding, and networking opportunities.

The PhD Experience at Booth

For Itzhak Ben-David, PhD ’08, the PhD Program in Finance was an exploratory journey.

Video Transcript

Itzhak Ben-David, ’08: 00:03 For me, the PhD Program was an exploratory journey. It was about discovering what was interesting for me, what will be interesting for other economists. It was about discovering something new about the world. Much of the PhD Program experience is to explore and to wonder a bit and to just think and expose yourself to new ideas and new disciplines. Back then, this was 2006, I found a billboard that said, "If you buy this house, we're going to give you a free car or $20,000 in cash." And this seemed really odd to me. What I realized that was going on, that this was part of a borrower fraud and the idea was that seller and the buyer will agree on a higher price on a house and the lender would be under the impression that the collateral worth more than it really is.

Itzhak Ben-David, ’08: 00:58 So I started to investigate other parts of the real estate food chain. What I saw is that in many parts of this chain, there were incentives in place pushing the intermediaries or the different economic agents to inflate prices. It's not always a bubble, but oftentimes it points out behavior that is not consistent with our textbook behavior. I had the dream team of advisors, Toby Moskowitz, Dick Taylor, Steve Levitt, and Erik Hurst. Each one of them contributed in different way to my dissertation and brought different ideas, brought different aspects. There is no better place of doing research than in Booth. It's really a hub of academic activity. There is no important work that doesn't pass at Chicago before being published. It's really an intellectual home. When you meet people and you know that they are from Booth, you can see the difference in their thinking.

Current Finance Students

PhD students in finance study a wide range of topics, including the behavior and determinants of security prices, the financing and investment decisions of firms, corporate governance, and the management and regulation of financial institutions. They go on to careers at prestigious institutions, from Yale University to the International Monetary Fund.

Current Students

Ching-Tse Chen Natalia Corado Mihir Gandhi  Huan (Bianca) He Jessica Li Edoardo Marchesi Alexa Marciano Rayhan Momin Lauren Mostrom Meichen Qian Francisco Ruela

Booth also offers joint degrees. Learn more about the current students in our Joint Program in Financial Economics .

Program Expectations and Requirements

The Stevens Doctoral Program at Chicago Booth is a full-time program. Students generally complete the majority of coursework and examination requirements within the first two years of studies and begin work on their dissertation during the third year. For details, see General Examination Requirements by Area in the Stevens Program Guidebook below.

Download the 2023-2024 Guidebook!

Graduate Education

Office of graduate and postdoctoral education, quantitative and computational finance (qcf), program contact.

Laura Czyzewski CODA Georgia Institute of Technology 756 West Peachtree St. NW Atlanta, GA 30308

Application Deadlines

• Early Round - October 15
• Standard Round - December 31
• Final Round for International candidates currently outside the US - March 15
• Final Round for US citizens, permanent residents and International candidates currently in the US - June 1
• Standard Round - September 1
• Final Round - October 15

Admittance Terms

Degree programs.

• Master's, Quantitative and Computational Finance

Interdisciplinary Programs

Quantitative and Computational Finance is offered by the College of Sciences, the College of Engineering, and Scheller College of Business. Students must select a home school from one of the following disciplines:

• Industrial and Systems Engineering
• Mathematics

Standardized Tests

TOEFL Requirements

• Institute Code: 5248
• Internet-based: 95, with minimum section scores of 19

IELTS Academic Requirements

• ≥ 7 (minimum band score for Reading, Listening, and Speaking is 6.5; minimum band score for Writing is 5.5)

GRE Requirements

• Institute Code: R5248
• General Test: Required

GMAT Requirements

• Institute Code: HWK-54-37

Application Requirements

• Three Letters of Recommendation

Program Costs

• Go to " View Tuition Costs by Semester ," and select the semester you plan to start. Graduate-level programs are divided into sections: Graduate Rates–Atlanta Campus, Study Abroad, Specialty Graduate Programs, Executive Education Programs
• Find the degree and program you are interested in and click to access the program's tuition and fees by credit hour PDF.
• In the first column, determine the number of hours (or credits) you intend to take for your first semester.
• Determine if you will pay in-state or out-of-state tuition. Learn more about the difference between in-state and out-of-state . For example, if you are an in-state resident and planning to take six credits for the Master of Architecture degree, the tuition cost will be $4,518.
• The middle section of the document lists all mandatory Institute fees. To see your total tuition plus mandatory fees, refer to the last two columns of the PDF.

The Office of Graduate Education has prepared an admissions checklist to help you navigate through the admissions process.

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Finance PhD

The columbia advantage.

Finance Doctoral students are trained in major areas in finance and economics, including, asset pricing, corporate finance, continuous-time models in finance, information economics, international finance, market micro-structure, and banking. The program prepares students for careers in scholarly research, and graduates take jobs primarily in academic or research institutions, while some students opt to work in industry. Details about the coursework and research students conduct on their way to earning their doctorate can be found on the Academics page.

The Finance Division at Columbia Business school has a track record of training scholars who go on to become academics at Universities, including many of the world’s most prestigious institutions. Our placement success is due in part to the close working relationship that students develop with the faculty in the division. The School intentionally keeps the PhD program small making it easier for students to find faculty collaborators and thrive.

Student Life

The Columbia Business School doctoral community consists of 125 students across six programs. The program attracts exceptional students from all over the world who are looking to develop research skills under the tutelage of faculty experts. Students come to the School for the exceptional training but also because they value the diversity, creativity, entrepreneurship and social tolerance that NYC offers.

current students

Current PhD Students in Finance

Nolwenn Allaire

Kirsten Burr

Cesare Dela Pierre

Amanda Dos Santos

Jacob Faber

Jessica Goldenring

Jeremias Huber

Clemens Lehner

Candy Martinez

Tomas Mondino

Mark Perez Clanton

Junjun Quan

Giacomo Ricciardi

Meha Sadasivam

Dhruv Singal

Stefan Walz

Shuwen Wang

Daheng Yang

Steven Zheng

PhD in Finance Placement

The Finance Division at Columbia Business school has a track record of training scholars who go on to become academics at many of the world’s most prestigious institutions.

Here is a list of placements, by year of graduation, over the past few years:

job market candidates

Finance Job Market Candidates

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Financial Mathematics

FinMath '24 Alumni Happy Hour!

See the highlights of our recent Alumni Happy Hour in Chicago!

Welcome to Financial Mathematics

A pioneer in its field, our Program offers accelerated, integrated coursework that explores the deep-rooted relationship that exists between theoretical and applied mathematics and the ever-evolving world of finance. Our mission is to equip our students with a solid foundation in mathematics, and in doing so provide them with practical knowledge that they can successfully apply to complicated financial models. Whether you are interested in becoming a full-time student, completing the program in five quarters, or a part-time professional taking one to two courses each quarter, all graduates of the Financial Mathematics program quickly distinguish themselves as leaders in their field; program alumni have gone forth to find success at companies like JP Morgan, UBS, and Goldman Sachs. Read more