October 23, 2013 - Rutgers University has announced the establishment of Rutgers Center of Excellence in Financial Statistics and Risk Management (FSRM). The Center's mission is to serve as a central platform for interdisciplinary research and collaboration between academic researchers, students and practitioners in the financial industry. The inauguration will take place at Rutgers Statistics for Financial Risk Management Conference on November 7, 2013.
Financial institutions increasingly rely on sophisticated statistical methods to process massive amounts of data quickly and extract useful information from it. Statistical methods are used to explore arbitrage opportunities due to market inefficiency, automate the asset evaluation and selection process, optimize portfolios and evaluate risk exposure.
"As the markets become faster and more interconnected, the ability to take and manage risk is a source of competitive advantage for financial institutions," says Neville O'Reilly, Associate Director of the FSRM Master's Degree program. "To this end, we see the need to advance research and practice through collaboration on studies, workshops and seminars, publication of technical reports and white papers as well as student training."
Rutgers Center of Excellence in FSRM will serve as a focal point for interdisciplinary research and facilitate the exchange of ideas and discussion around practical problems. It will serve as a platform for close collaboration between Fellows (scholars and practitioners) and Research Associates (current FSRM Master's Degree program students) on specific studies. Their findings will be widely disseminated for the benefit of the entire financial community.
Further, the Center will help Fellows generate research proposals for competing grants and funding and provide seed-funding to sponsor or support research activities. It will run research competitions on topics related to FSRM, participate in and sponsor external activities related to the Center's mission, and extend research expertise on consulting projects.
Revolution Analytics, a leading commercial provider of open source R, a statistical language with more than 2 million users worldwide, is a sponsor of the Rutgers' Center of Excellence and conference. The company provides its software to universities for free, and supports centers of excellence around the world.
"We're pleased to support Rutgers' initiative, having already partnered with Dell and Intel to establish centers of excellence in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur," says David Smith, Vice President of Marketing and Community at Revolution Analytics. "Our support reinforces our corporate mission to establish R as the modern standard for statistical programming."
Rutgers Center of Excellence in FSRM is part of Department of Statistics and Biostatistics at Rutgers University, and has a close tie with the FSRM Masters Degree program. Professionals may participate in the Center through three categories of membership. Individuals may join as general members. Institutional membership is available to financial firms and government agencies. Fellows and Research Associates may join by invitation only.
Rutgers Statistics for Financial Risk Management Conference is part of the 2013 International Year of Statistics celebrations. Financial services industry professionals and researchers will gather for this one day event to hear distinguished experts from around the world share their insights on the statistical facets of risk management.
