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Fordham AI & Quantitative Hedge Fund Conference
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| With Amal Moussa (MD, Goldman Sachs), Luca Capriotti (Head of Quant Strategies, UBS), Armando Gonzalez (Founder/CEO, RavenPack), Kevin Gahwhyler (Meteora Capital), Claudia Perlich (Two Sigma), Samson Qian (Citadel), Nan Xiao (Greenland Capital), Lisa Huang (Head of AI Investment, Fidelity). |
| Fordham at Lincoln Center, 113 W 60th St |
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Mar 19 (Thu) , 2026 @ 09:00 AM
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$199 |
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/-73.98509979,40.77103043,13,0,0/550x200?access_token=pk.eyJ1IjoiZ2FyeXNndWlkZSIsImEiOiJjamtobmRiYmgwb3gwM3F1a2o2Mmd0YWw3In0.DinA62CR3-OKtf3axa5O7Q)
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| DETAILS |
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08.30 - Registration
08.50 - Opening Address from the Chairs: Director, MSQF Fordham Director, Professor Qing Sheng & Conference Chair Faruque Khan & Conference Host Rebellion Research CEO, Alexander Fleiss
8.55am Keynote: Marcos M. Lopez de Prado, Global Head of Quantitative R&D at the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), one of the largest sovereign wealth funds & Cornell University Professor
9.40am Panel: Future of Machine Learning in Quantitative Finance Machine learning has moved from an experimental tool to a core component of quantitative finance, but the field is still evolving at a rapid pace. This panel will examine where ML is heading in the next five years, with a focus on architectures, interpretability, & integration into live trading environments. Topics will include advances in transformer & graph-based models, the blending of traditional statistical methods with deep learning, & the challenge of maintaining model robustness in shifting market regimes.
Moderated by Samson Qian, Citadel
Speakers: Arkin Gupta, Citadel, Nan Xiao, Greenland Capital CTO, Kathryn Zhao(2025 Quant of The Year), Head Quant & Head of Trading, Cantor Fitzgerald, Amal Moussa, MD, Goldman Sachs, Matt Rowe, Managing Director, Man Group, Mike Tiano, Deputy Head of Systematic Strategies, Schonfeld
10.10 Panel: Can LTCM Happen in 2026?
This panel examines whether a modern version of Long Term Capital Management could emerge in today's markets. Using the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management as a historical anchor, the discussion will explore how leverage, crowded trades, model risk, & liquidity mismatches manifest in a world of systematic strategies, AI driven portfolios, & faster capital flows. Panelists will debate whether advances in risk management, regulation, & transparency truly reduce systemic risk, or whether new forms of correlation, hidden leverage, & feedback loops make a future LTCM style event not only possible but inevitable. The session will focus on where fragility may be building today, how it might unwind, & what investors should watch before the next crisis reveals itself.
Moderator: Jacob Bowers, Lead Financial Engineer, Blackrock
Panelists: Mike Soss, Chief Investment Officer, Millburn Hedge Fund, Luca Capriotti, Global Head of Quantitative Strategies (QS) Credit at UBS, Kevin Gahwhyler, Managing Director, Meteora Capital Hedge Fund, Samir Shah, Managing Partner, MBS Partners, Abhi Khane, Managing Director, 400 Capital Management
10.40 Fireside Chat: Ai vs Data : Claudia Perlich, Managing Director, Two Sigma, Lisa Huang, Head of AI Investment Management & Planning, Fidelity
11.00 Break
11.20 Keynote : Entering the Age of Cognitive Markets : Armando Gonzalez, Founder & CEO Ravenpack
Finance has entered an exponential era, where progress accelerates faster than institutions can adapt through linear thinking. This keynote explores what it means to operate in the age of cognitive markets, an era in which intelligence becomes a scalable resource, workflows turn cognitive rather than procedural, & markets co-evolve with autonomous reasoning systems. We examine how agentic AI is reshaping discovery, risk, research, & market structure, & why firms must re-architect around intelligence rather than merely implement AI.
11.40 Panel: Capturing Alpha in 2026 Markets & ETF's As market structures evolve, liquidity fragments, & AI-driven trading becomes the norm, traditional alpha sources are shrinking while new ones emerge in unconventional places. This panel will explore the most promising alpha-generation approaches for 2026 & beyond, from integrating alternative datasets & multimodal signals to deploying cutting-edge machine learning architectures & causal inference methods. In addition a look at the future of ETF investing in today's market
Moderated by Caio Natividade, Deutsche Bank Global Head of Quantitative Investment Solutions Research
Speakers: Sid Ghatak, CEO, Increase Alpha, Neal Berger, Founder & CIO Eagle's View Capital Management, Zachary Squire, Managing Partner Brevan Howard Tekmerion, Macrae Sykes, Portfolio Manager - Gabelli Financial Opportunities ETF (NYSE: GABF)
12.25 Panel: Multimodal Alpha Feeds
From text to images, audio, & geospatial signals-quant teams are now fusing multimodal data streams into unified predictive pipelines. This session will examine the technical, computational, & data-governance challenges of extracting alpha from disparate, high-dimensional sources.
Moderator: Dr. Harvey Stein, Two Sigma
Speakers: Naim El-Far, Head of Equities Investment Engineering @ Bridgewater, Paul Krueger, Millenium Quant Trader, Rahul Gupta, DRW Quant Researcher & Trader, Dr. Gregory Pelts, Director, ScotiaBank, Dr Andy Li, Bank of America Director & Fordham Professor
1.15pm Lunch
2.00pm Panel: Alternative Data's Next Frontier: From Novelty to Necessity
As alternative data cements its role in institutional investing, the challenge shifts from discovery to integration. This panel will explore how hedge funds & asset managers are operationalizing diverse datasets-geolocation, satellite imagery, supply chain signals, & unstructured web data-while balancing costs, compliance, & scalability. Discussion will cover regulatory scrutiny, vendor transparency, model interpretability, & whether AI-driven data synthesis will unlock the next wave of alpha or overwhelm firms with noise.
Moderated by Christina Qi, Databento CEO
Speakers: Qaisar Hasan, CEO Maiden Century, Dorothy Ruderman, Data Strategy at Verition Fund Management, Dimitri Bianco Founder Fancy Quant, Tony Berkman, Fmr Two Sigma Head of Data, Garden Leave currently, Mark Fleming-Williams, Head of Data Sourcing Capital Fund Management
2.45pm Future of Bitcoin & Crypto Fireside Chat: Marshall Beard, COO, Gemini interviewed by Duke Professor Jimmie Lenz, Duke's Director For Master of Engineering in Financial Technology
3.45pm Day 1 Concludes!
March 20th, 2026 : Day 2 Begins
08.30 - Registration
8.50 Panel: State-of-the-Art ML Architectures in Quant Finance
Transformers, diffusion models, graph neural networks-what's hype, what's working, & what's next in cutting-edge ML for trading & risk? Experts will break down real-world case studies & discuss scaling these architectures without losing interpretability or control.
Moderator: Roshan Shah, Head of Technology, MIO Partners, $25B multi-strategy hedge fund
Manish Aurora, Hedge Fund Manager, Rational Investments, Petros Zerfos, Principal Research Scientist & Manager at IBM Research, Atlas Wang, XTX Markets Research Director, Haoxue Wang, Quant, Millenium, Michael Sotiropoulos, Princeton Professor (visiting) NYU Professor (visiting) Fordham Professor (visiting) & MD Imperative Execution
9.30 Keynote Speech Dr. Dhagash Mehta, Head of Applied Artificial Intelligence Research for Investment Management, Blackrock
10.10 Break
10:35 Keynote Speech Multivariate Kelly Criterion, Leverage & Regime-Switching Universal
Portfolios, Professor Mikhail Smirnov, Columbia University
11.00 Panel: Is AI Taking Over Alternative Data
The explosion of machine learning, multimodal embeddings, & foundation models is transforming how quant investors source, process, & monetize alternative data. Once a niche differentiator, alternative data is increasingly dominated by AI-driven extraction, pattern detection, & signal generation. This session will debate whether AI is enhancing the alt-data ecosystem or fundamentally replacing traditional research heuristics. The panel will explore how automated pipelines are reshaping vendor landscapes, how models ingest unstructured streams, & whether true alpha now depends more on model architecture than dataset exclusivity.
Moderated by: Ethan Geismar, Head of Data, Jefferies
Dr. Iro Tasitsiomi, Head of Investments Data Science T. Rowe Price Fordham Speaker, Claudia Perlich, Managing Director, Two Sigma, Sahana Athreya, Millenium, Eren Kurshan, Princeton University, Peter Cotton, Stealth Hedge Fund, Peter Hafez, Chief Data Scientist, RavenPack
11:55 Panel Bitcoin vs Crypto: Who Will Be the Winner?
This panel will examine the ongoing tension between Bitcoin as the original decentralized digital asset & the broader cryptocurrency ecosystem encompassing altcoins, stablecoins, & blockchain-based tokens. Panelists will explore whether Bitcoin's brand dominance, network security, & adoption trajectory can maintain its leadership - or whether other crypto innovations, DeFi protocols, & Web3-native assets will capture the future of digital value.
Moderated by Logan Beirne, Strive Asset Management Board Member, Yale Law School
Panelists: Sean Slotterback, Crypto Hedge Fund Manager, Professor Jim Liew, Johns Hopkins University, James Koutloulas, Typhon Capital Management Hedge Fund Manager, Kelly Ye, Deputy CIO, Avenir Group
12.35 Keynote Jon Najarian, Market Rebellion Co-Founder
12.55 Keynote Andrew Left, Citron Research Editor
1.15pm Lunch
2.15 Keynote: Data Structure in the Age of Ai Where Everything is a Trade, Kirk McKeown, Co-Founder, Carbon Arc & Point72's Fmr Head of Proprietary Research
2.35 Keynote: When More Data Hurts: Navigating the Nonstationarity-Complexity Tradeoff in Return Prediction, Professor Agostino Capponi, Columbia University
2.55 Fireside Chat: Future of Investment Data, Sameer Gupta, Apollo Global Management, Managing Director & Head of Data & Point72's Fmr Head of Data
3.25 Keynote Speech Understanding Where Bitcoin & Crypto Will Go in 2026? Duke University Professor & Director of Duke FinTech Jimmie Lenz
3.45 The Evolution of Financial Data Infrastructure: OpenBB x Snowflake
Tom Gray, Snowflake, Ihsan Erman Saracgil, OpenBB
4.05 Keynote Speech : Johns Hopkins Professor of Practice Sudip Gupta
5.00pm Networking
6.30pm Day 2 & Conference Concludes
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