In episode five of CapConversation, we talk to Dr. Ionut Florescu, PhD, an award-winning Research Associate Professor of Financial Engineering and Director of the Hanlon Financial Systems Lab at Stevens Institute of Technology.

Florescu, who grew up in Romania under Communist rule, shares the fascinating story of why he chose to become a high school professor of Mathematics, and how he created SHIFT (Stevens High Frequency Trading), an advanced market simulation platform that replicates the real-time, high-frequency behavior of a modern automated exchange. The platform will be a utility for Capco clients to test for algorithmic trading strategies and other software programs intended to interface directly to the market, enable predictive responses to potentially disruptive events and identify potential regulatory measures to control or monitor patterns of market activity.

Episode highlights include:

-  Why the financial services industry is the most sophisticated application of mathematics today 
-  What bigtech could bring to financial services technology
-  How SHIFT works and the trading and economic issues the technology will solve
-  Introducing APIs, automated traders to SHIFT and coding a complex system
-  The importance of safe market experimentation
-  The role of humans in machine learning and quantum device technology, and why Terminator cannot become a        reality…yet.

For more information about this podcast and our partnership with The Stevens Institute of Technology, contact Leonard Langsdorf.