Financial research has grown increasingly complex as industry leaders and policymakers struggle to understand how technology has fundamentally changed the way markets and businesses operate. Faculty at the School of Business at Stevens use the resources in the Hanlon Financial Systems Center to do the kind of thoughtful, impactful research that can't easily be done elsewhere. Researchers at the center aim to broaden the meaning of finance as a discipline — beyond its traditional focus on capital structure, asset management and portfolio returns — to encompass the new regulatory, risk, and technology management perspectives increasingly required to ensure successful outcomes in a global systemic framework.
Small class sizes at Stevens give its high-achieving students opportunities to work with faculty to do the kind of engaging research demanded by companies in the finance space.
The one-of-a-kind technological infrastructure at the Hanlon Financial Systems Center gives Stevens researchers the tools needed to explore finance, financial systems, financial engineering and related disciplines, such as cybersecurity, risk management, high-frequency finance and monetary policy. Technology in the labs allows researchers to make better predictions about market activity, more thoroughly understand how to manage and model risk, and teach professionals how to extract and visualize data to make better decisions for the enterprise.
That technology also allows faculty to bring a systemic perspective to their work — a requirement in creating impactful research that aims to understand the opportunities and vulnerabilities in interconnected markets. Events or actions in one sector of the financial world can propagate quickly into other sectors, interacting across boundaries and breaching traditional firewalls with complex consequences that are difficult to predict, and impossible to navigate, without a comprehensive understanding of the financial system as a whole.
Areas of expertise
Researchers at the Hanlon Financial Systems Center are faculty members or researchers of the School of Business. Faculty and researchers from other schools at Stevens, as well as visiting faculty from other institutions are also invited. Their research spans areas ranging from financial engineering, statistics and econometrics to machine learning, artificial intelligence and cognitive computing. Faculty and students use the one-of-a-kind Hanlon environment to conduct research into areas such as financial networks, systemic risk, stochastic volatility models, liquidity measures of stock markets, portfolio optimization, robotics and artificial intelligence via neuronal networks and agent-based modeling.
Research Specialties
Technology and Finance
Technology has changed the game from everything from the way trades are evaluated and executed to portfolio optimization strategies and regulatory considerations. The wealth of technologies available to Stevens researchers in the Hanlon labs allows for simulations, stress tests, machine learning, and computational and modeling experiments that are defining the future of finance.
Risk
The proper management of risk is of utmost importance in investment, financial decision making, corporate management, cybersecurity, catastrophe resilience — virtually any discipline connected to finance. Research in this area leverages technologies in the lab to better understand and predict risk.
Capital Markets Research
Research in this area explores how technology can help eliminate the costs, redundancies and opportunities for fraud baked into the current financial system.
