The 20 top data scientists in banking and finance

As data scientists displace rainmakers and traders as the most sought after people in finance, a new group of people hold the keys to the industry’s future. The promotion of Marty Chavez, a technologist, as CFO of Goldman Sachs, and Eli Wiesel, a quant, as Goldman’s chief information officer, is prophetic. Whether in sales or trading, the future will increasingly be about using computational power to analyze data.

We’ve assembled a list of some of the current top data people working in banking and finance. By focusing on data scientists rather than ‘data officers’ we’ve tried to capture the people who actually manipulate the data rather than the people who manage the people who manipulate the data (although there might be some of the latter on here if they do both.) Let us know if you think we’ve left anyone out via the comments box at the bottom of the page. The list below is not in ranked order.

1. Kwangmoo Koh at Blackrock

Koh is a director in data science at Blackrock. The investment manager has a well established data science and machine learning team, which was strengthened in 2015 by the arrival of Bill MacCartney, a senior research scientist from Google. MacCartney left in April 2016 and is now working on Siri’s “proactive intelligence” platform at Apple.

Koh has a PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University and joined Blackrock as an associate in 2009.

2. Pierre Demartines at Blackrock

Also a director in Blackrock’s data science team, Demartines works with Koh. He has a PhD in computer science from the Institut Polytechnique de Grenoble and joined Blackrock in 2010.

3. Angus Lund at Morgan Stanley

Angus Lund is the global head of AlphaWise, a data analytics unit within Morgan Stanley’s research division. An Oxford University graduate with a degree in mathematics, he joined Morgan Stanley as a research analyst in 1998 after starting out as an accountant. Unusually among this group, he doesn’t have a PhD.

4. Raghav Madhavan at UBS

Madhavan is the chief data scientist at UBS. A PhD in information technology from the Leonard Stern School of Business, he joined in 2015 from J.P. Morgan where he held a similar role.

5. Afsheen Afshar at J.P. Morgan

Afshar is the chief data scientist at J.P. Morgan’s corporate and investment bank. A PhD from Stanford University, he joined J.P. Morgan in January 2016 after spending five and a half years at Goldman Sachs.

6. Graham Giller at J.P. Morgan

Giller works with Afshar at J.P. Morgan, where he’s head of data science research for the corporate and investment bank. He has a PhD in experimental elementary particle physics from the University of Oxford and was previously chief data scientist at Bloomberg.

7. Michael Recce at Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC)

Recce is the chief data scientist at GIC in Singapore. A PhD in neuroscience from UCL, he joined in 2016 after 15 months at Point72 Asset Management (where he reportedly suffered in a culture clash with the fund’s traders).

8. David Loaiza at Point72

Loaiza is the new chief data scientist at Poiint72 Asset Management. He has a PhD in nuclear engineering from the University of Mexico and joined from J.P. Morgan in 2015.

9. Andy Moniz at Deutsche Bank

Moniz is the chief data scientist at Deutsche Bank, where his role is to apply data analysis to the bank’s systematic trading strategies. A PhD in Information Retrievel and Natural Language Processing at Erasmus University Rotterdam, he joined Deutsche in January from UBS.

10. Aric Whitewood at Credit Suisse

The head of data science and global head of client analytics at Credit Suisse, Zurich-based Whitewood has a PhD in electrical engineering from UCL London. He joined Credit Suisse in 2010.

11. Edouard d’Archimbaud at BNP Paribas

D’Archimbaud is head of the data and artificial intelligence lab at BNP Paribas in Paris. He has a DEA (Masters qualification) from Paris’s Université Paris Dauphine and a Master in applied mathematics from Paris’s Ecole Polytechnique. He joined BNP last year.

12. Dave Ferrucci, Bridgewater

Ferrucci joined Bridgewater in December 2012. He previously worked for IBM where he was the lead researcher on Watson, the company’s artificial intelligence engine that won the Jeopardy competition on TV in 2011. He’s understood to be building an AI team at Bridgewater. Ferrucci has a PhD in computer science from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

13. Matt Ober at ThirdPoint

Ober is the chief data scientist at Daniel Loeb’s New York-based hedge fund, Third Point Management. He joined in late 2016 from Worldquant, a quant investment fund, on a package allegedly worth $2m. Ober has a degree in business and finance from California State University.

14. Krishna Kesavan at Numerai

Kesavan is chief data scientist at Numerai, a “crowd-sourced hedge fund” based in San Francisco. He joined in 2016 from Apigee, the Application Programming Interface (API) platform provider acquired by Google. Kesavan has a masters in engineering and computer science engineering from the Indian Institute of Science.

15. Gideon Mann at Bloomberg

Mann has been head of the data science office at Bloomberg since 2014. He joined from Google, where he was a staff research scientist. He has a PhD in computer science from the John Hopkins University.

16. Alfred Spector at Two Sigma

Spector is the chief technology officer at quantitative hedge fund Two Sigma. He joined in 2015 from Google, where he spent nearly eight years as Vice President of Research and Special Initiatives. Spector has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University.

17. Harry Powell at Barclays

Powell is head of Barclays’ advanced data analytics team. He joined in March 2014 from Betfair, where he was chief data scientist. Powell has a masters degree in economics from UCL in London.

18. Deeptasree Mitra at the Bank of England

The only woman on this list, Mitra is head of data analytics and modelling at the Bank of England. She was previously head of data science and data solutions at British Gas.

19. Umesh Subramanian at Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs has plenty of data analysts and quants in its strats group, but Subramanian is the partner in charge of finance engineering and analytics. He joined Goldman from Morgan Stanley in 2005 and has a masters in industrial engineering and operations research from the University of Illinois.

20. Vasant Dhar at SCT Capital Management

A director in the PhD program in data science at NYU University, Dhar is also an entrepreneur in the field of finance. He founded SCT Capital Management, a hedge fund based on predictive models in 1998 and co-founded Deep Blue Analytics, a consulting company that applies data analysis to commercial problems in 2012.

Follow @MadameButcher
Contact: sbutcher@efinancialcareers.com

““