What was your path/journey after you graduated from Cornell?
Through the Cornell co-op program, I interned at Goldman Sachs - and that led to me working with Japanese equity derivatives at Long-Term Capital Management, which led to working in the Equity Trading Lab at Morgan Stanley. Our goal was to trade the bank's money for a profit, but along the way we automated the firm's stock trading to make it cheaper and more dependable for everyone.
I was reading a lot of statistics books, so I left NYC for Chicago to get a master’s degree in statistics at the University of Chicago, where I stayed for the Ph.D. program. My first daughter was born right around that time; grad school with a baby is tough! I defended my statistics dissertation in 2008 and joined the University of Illinois Chicago as an Assistant Professor of Finance. At UIC, I taught about investments, commodities, and how trading works; along the way, I appeared on TV, testified before the state legislature, and consulted for trading shops and even the intelligence community. I wrote a graduate-level textbook on investing and data analysis and even taught from the book at both Notre Dame and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
I missed the quick feedback of industry, though, and thus I left academia and coded up an algorithmic futures strategy which I traded for a year and a half. My second daughter was born in late 2019, and I took time to focus on family during the height of the pandemic. After that, I decided to consult for an asset manager heading up their initiative to bring data science to their investing decisions.
That led to Parametric; while we are a part of Morgan Stanley, I get to work on academic research and explain to clients how that research helps them see and reduce risks they might not even know they have. It is fulfilling to help people have more money to retire and enjoy time with their grandkids! I love working with data and using economics to illuminate parts of our world.
I am most proud of my daughters (the oldest is studying bioengineering: so cool!), having made financial markets more fair, and having helped the intelligence community better use financial data.
What advice would you give to a student starting at Cornell in Fall 2025?
From the Class of '95: Akash Sehgal, Mark Lipsits, Matt Kangas, Ilya Pritsker, Howard Yeh, John Foo, Tina Chang, and Mani Rad. From some other years: Sumeet Jain, John Bradford, Stephanie Cockerl, Rudro De, Sandeep Maira, Chuck Mikolajczak, and Eric Nisbett. And of course, my wife, Yuree Whang '99!
Which Cornell classmates do you keep in contact with?
Take risks and challenge yourself! Take classes in areas you were always curious about, even if they look hard or scary. Try some clubs and meet new people. Walk through parts of campus you do not always see. Immerse yourself in the world around you: the beauty, the humanity, the quirks, and the ideas that help make sense of it. And do not forget to have fun doing it with friends!
How did your Cornell experience most influence you post-graduation?
As a first-generation student, I had often been in situations where I had to hide how smart I was. Coming to Cornell was like finally being able to breathe freely: I could be openly smart and quick. I learned to dream bigger and to be unafraid - that our world is big but so worth exploring. I also realized that sometimes you should be the person to make things happen. Those lessons changed my life.