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Petter Kolm on the Future of Quantitative Finance Education

For the third episode of the Quantcast Master’s⁣ Series – part⁤ of Risk.net‘s Tommorow’s Quants project -⁣ we ⁣speak to⁤ Petter Kolm,⁤ director of the Master’s in Mathematics and Finance at‍ the Courant ⁣Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University.

Kolm, ⁤along with research partner Nicholas ⁢Westray of Point72, is the ⁣newly anointed buy-side quant of the year in the Risk Awards 2026. He has ⁣been director‍ of Courant’s master’s programme as 2007 ⁤and serves as a board member or external ⁣adviser to several financial firms, giving him a broad outlook on the education⁣ students ‍need to start a career in quantitative finance.

This perspective is characteristic of the way Courant’s programme is organised: its lecturers are almost all affiliated to the industry, covering senior positions in⁢ financial institutions. They include quants of the stature of Leif Andersen, global head of quant analytics at Bank of America, and Bruno Dupire, head of quant⁤ research at bloomberg.

Actually, the banking‍ sector connection was ⁣the main driver ⁤for⁣ the launch of the master’s programme in 1999.The ⁣programme’s founders had noticed a ⁢number of besuited students were attending⁤ certain of Courant’s ⁣mathematics classes in the mid-to-late ’90s and ⁣ultimately discovered they were Wall Street analysts, strengthening ⁤their knowledge of stochastic calculus, probability theory and the use of the Black-Scholes model to price options. Courant responded to the demand by designing a master’s programme that‍ would fulfil ⁣the industry’s needs.

For several years, derivative price modelling ⁤and risk management⁢ were central ‍to the curriculum. But,after the global financial⁤ crisis of 2008 and subsequent shifts in market dynamics,the programme’s ⁢leaders ⁣adapted.