IIT Madras Opens Research Lab for AI in Quantitative Finance

The Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) has opened a new Quantitative Finance research lab. A CSR funding of Rs 5.65 crore is being provided by quantitative trading and investing business AlphaGrep Securities towards the development of this facility.

The "AlphaGrep Quantitative Research Lab" will carry out exploratory research projects in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) for quantitative finance, including, among other things, research on quantitative risk management, quantitative investment management, and the microstructure of financial markets.

The main goals of this research centre are to develop focused courses for students on AI for quantitative finance, train various stakeholders in this field, conduct exploratory projects on applying cutting-edge AI techniques to quantitative finance, and develop data sets and other resources to support research.

Professor Nandan Sudarsanam, Dr. Nirav Bhatt, and Dr. Arun Ayyar—as adjunct faculty members from the Department of Data Science and AI at IIT Madras—will be among the professors working in this lab.

The MoU for this collaboration was signed today by Mohit Mutreja, Chairman and Managing Director of AlphaGrep Securities, and Prof. Ashwin Mahalingam, Dean (Alumni and Corporate Relations), IIT Madras, in the presence of Prof. B. Ravindran, Head, Wadhwani School of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, IIT Madras, and other stakeholders.

The financial institutions were primarily managed by their legal group thirty years ago, their finance/audit group the next decade, and their information technology group at the moment. The moment is right to examine how AI may help these organisations run their operations more effectively and efficiently. The proposed lab will specifically address this problem, according to IIT Madras Director Prof. V. Kamakoti.