The Lally School of Management & Technology

Offers New Master’s Degree Track in Financial Engineering & Risk Analytics

The unfolding restructuring of the world of finance is closing conventional opportunities and opening new ones. Yet a clear lesson from the fast-moving global financial crisis is that one must understand and respect the first principles of finance. Financial markets span the globe and innovation to make these markets work efficiently and effectively combine to render the modern practice of finance to be complex. Fortunately, sophisticated tools and methods have been developed and tested to enable risk-taking in the complex arena of global finance to be not only profitable, but serving the interest of society.

Informed by experts in the world of practice and by our outstanding faculty in finance and accounting, Lally has launched a graduate plan of study in Financial Engineering and Risk Analytics (FERA) to prepare students to respond effectively to the changes and new challenges that characterize the rapidly evolving world of finance. FERA is a collaboration of the Lally School, Rensselaer’s business school, with the departments of applied mathematics, computer science, decision sciences and engineering systems, economics, and the campus-wide IT Program.

The FERA curriculum balances modern finance theory and advanced analytical techniques that have been validated in practice. Through rigorous training in empirical research and modeling, using a variety of professional databases and computer software packages, students are exposed to emerging concepts, practices and techniques applied widely in the finance industry and by central banks.

We consciously blend finance principles and real world application of financial analysis, risk management, and valuation to assure both breadth and depth in the educational experience. Our super-computer and our state-of-the-art experimental media platform (EMPAC) harbor the computational resources to deconstruct liquidity problems that have beset capital markets, to simulate optimal investment paths for extensive portfolios, assess risk in real time, and produce new means of visualizing multi-dimensional financial data required for decision-making.

Anchored in the Lally School, FERA is supported not only by a solid group of faculty from across the campus of Rensselaer, but by practitioners from industry and by policy makers and regulators from central banks and agencies of government. Our Finance Interest Group (Fin-IG) assembles members from money centers around the world with faculty and students. Once each quarter during the academic year the Fin-IG presents special program events on topics of contemporary finance. Members of the Fin-IG contribute to our classroom experiences and assist with career counseling and job placement for graduates of FERA.

Students with no business or management education begin with a course in mathematics and statistics. All FERA students must take or demonstrate proficiency in economics, financial management, and financial accounting. The program is organized into two parts. The first part includes Financial Trading, Investments, Options and Derivatives, and International Finance. In the second part of the program, students may choose between either one of two tracks: Financial Modeling and Financial Analysis.

Students in the FERA prepare themselves for a wide range of careers, including: financial analyst and quantitative risk analysts, loan portfolio analyst, financial operations manager, treasurer operations manager, financial controller, investment banker, financial litigation research analyst, bank examiner and central bank policy analyst. For more information, contact Gabriela Sheehan at 518.276.6496 sheehg3@rpi.edu.

Iftekhar Hasan is the Cary L. Wellington Professor of Finance at the Lally School of Management & Technology. He also serves as director of Lally’s International Center for Financial Research, and editor of its publication, the Journal of Financial Stability. Dr. Hasan is the scientific advisor at the Central Bank of Finland, a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, and a research fellow at the Berkley Center of Entrepreneurial Studies at the Stern School of Business of New York University. He earned his doctorate and master’s M.A. from the University of Houston, and his B.S.S. from the University of Dhaka.

The Future of New York Business Series

in partnership with The Business Council of New York