Master of Financial Engineering Program

Estella Yongxue Lin received her BS in Quantitative Finance from National University of Singapore in 2008, where she graduated with first class honors. Under the prestigious and highly-selective NUS Overseas College (NOC) program, she enlisted in a 12-month exchange program at the University of Pennsylvania, studying at UPenn part time while interning full-time at the Science Center, a Philadelphia-based venture capitalist and incubation center. Prior to her departure from UPenn, she participated in a summer internship with the IT-equities department of Credit Suisse in Singapore. During the internship, she was primarily involved in the designing of a project aimed at reconciling the tick and order on the NASDAQ market. Estella also interned at the equity derivatives department of UBS, spending 5 weeks with the sales team in Singapore and another 5 with the structuring team in Hong Kong. Throughout the internship, she was very involved in brainstorming of the themes of the products, selecting the underlying securities, market research, and the backtesting and pricing of products. After graduation, she intends to use her quantitative skills and experience to pursue a career in trading and portfolio management. Estella passed the CFA level I exam in 2008 and spends her free time backpacking, enjoying Latin and ballroom dancing, and singing.

Lui Lui was the Head Trader at Voleon Capital Management LP, a statistical arbitrage hedge fund firm based in downtown Berkeley prior to enrolling in the Berkeley MFE. Prior to joining Voleon, he worked as a research assistant in UC Berkeley’s Mathematics Department, developing more efficient software for 3D X-ray tomography simulation. He holds a BS in Engineering Mathematics and Statistics from UC Berkeley. Lui is interested in a career in financial engineering because it balances his interest in finance and his academic training in mathematics and computer science. He believes the MFE program provides the best training available for his future career.  In addition to his professional and academic interests, he enjoys playing cello and martial arts. Lui is an upper brown belt in UC Berkeley’s Judo and Yongmodo teams and is planning to complete his first-Dan back belt test by the end of this year.

Gordon Madding received his BS in Mechanical Engineering, cum laude, from Boston University.  After receiving an MS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Southern California, he went to work for an engineering consulting firm in San Diego.  As an engineer, he supported a wide variety of projects involving static and dynamic analyses of aerospace and mechanical systems.  Currently a CFA Level 1 candidate, he is looking forward to a career in the financial industry upon completing the MFE program. Gordon is an avid sports fan and, as an undergrad, he served as the assistant sports editor and staff writer for the Boston University student newspaper.

Arpit Mathur graduated with a BTech and MTech in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai. After graduation, he joined as an Equity Quantitative Research Analyst at Lehman Brothers, Mumbai. He led the development of several marquee post-trade analytical tools at Lehman, working in all aspects of development from modeling and designing to client-delivery. He later agreed to transfer to Lehman’s London office, where he was involved in improving the risk, efficiency and profitability of the securities lending and the client services teams in the Prime Services business as a Quantitative Research Analyst. He joins the MFE to improve the depth of his quantitative finance knowledge and wants to work in the area of risk management after graduating. Already a CFA Level 1, he intends to complete the CFA charter soon after graduating. A keen sports enthusiast, he also enjoys reading and spending time with friends.

Tom Matsumoto graduated cum laude from UCLA with a BS in Math/Applied Science, with a focus in Operations Research. After graduation, Tom worked at Ernst & Young, IT Consulting for Fortune 500 clients, which gave him the opportunity to work in various industries and overseas, spending one year in Tokyo. After this experience, he was eager to learn more about the finance industry and soon received an opportunity to work for Capital Group Companies, a private investment management company with over $1.3 trillion in managed assets. There he was first exposed to an area of quantitative finance, working on an asset allocation algorithm for 30 mutual funds, managing approximately $1 trillion. Post MFE, Tom is looking to leverage the skills gained in areas such as asset management or risk management. In his spare time, he enjoys traveling, movies, and boxing.

Alexandre Morali worked as a front office Trader Assistant in charge of Fund Derivative Products at Calyon CIB for the last year and a half in New York. Prior to moving to New York, Alexandre worked for almost one year at Societe Generale in Paris as a financial engineer, where he was in charge of checking the pricing of exotic products. Alexandre holds an Engineering degree from the Ecole Centrale de Lyon, a French engineering school. By joining the MFE program, he wants to leverage on his experience and gain the extra quantitative skills necessary to pursue a successful career in exotic product structuring/trading in an investment bank or a hedge fund in any major financial hub. Having grown up in Paris and Lyon, Alexandre likes going to theaters and museums. He is also a sportsman and enjoys playing soccer and tennis in his spare time.

Benjamin Nadal holds a MS in Industrial Engineering from the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, a top tier French engineering school. As part of his graduate program, he spent his last year of studies in the Industrial Engineering and Operations Research department at UC Berkeley, where he started studying Financial Engineering. He recently completed a 6-month internship in Project Finance at Dexia in Paris, where he worked actively in developing models helping to locate the optimal financial structure for the financing of infrastructure projects. Prior to joining the MFE program, he completed Level 1 of the CFA Institute in December 2008. He expects the MFE to provide him with a solid background in quantitative finance enabling him to pursue a successful career in exotic or fixed income product structuring. Among other things, he enjoys going to the theatres, playing tennis and, especially, skiing.

Alexey Orlovsky holds two Masters Degrees with honors. At Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (PhysTech), he specialized in dynamics of continuous media. For his thesis, he built fundamental mathematical models of gas flows with rotation resulting in an unusual effect of heat separation. After graduation, Alexey obtained diversified work experience in different industries, both in the US and abroad. Most recently, he worked as a software engineer in VMware, architecting enterprise-grade desktop virtualization solutions and addressing computational performance at scale. Throughout his career, Alexey has been interested in finding connections linking business processes together, which explains his interest in information technology. Becoming increasingly interested in understanding the business and people side of the equation, in 2005 he joined an MBA program at Santa Clara University, CA. Achieving a concentration in finance, Alexey capped it with a Master’s thesis in the area of high-frequency program trading. The research aims to develop ways of finding market inefficiencies through pattern analysis, using a non-parametric Genetic Algorithm approach. Joining Berkeley’s MFE program will help Alexey sharpen his skills in the two areas he enjoys most – mathematics and finance. In his free time, Alexey loves to read, hike, and travel around the world with his family.

Nihar R. Panda, CFA, holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. Following his graduate studies, he joined Lucent Technologies. Later he joined Flextrade Systems, a global leader in broker-neutral algorithmic trading platforms and execution systems for equities, foreign exchange and listed derivatives, where he worked on building trading system and algorithms for foreign exchange. His desire to pursue a career in finance coupled with his ability in mathematics and quantitative methods led him to apply for a degree in financial engineering and join the CFA program, which he successfully completed between Dec 2006-June 2008. Post MFE, he wants to take up a trading position at a bank or a hedge fund. Eventually, he wants to be a portfolio/asset manager.

Jiwon Park, CPA, graduated summa cum laude from Seoul National University, where he earned his BA in Economics. Jiwon is both professionally and academically versatile. At Metrix Research Co., he managed 14 national survey projects utilizing his quantitative analytical skills and published various governmental reports in, for example, the Korea E-Business Index (KEBIX); his contributions continue to establish IT-related monetary strategies for S. Korea. During his internship at the dealing center of Standard Chartered Bank in Seoul, Jiwon worked extensively with a wide range of structured derivatives products. Immediately prior to joining the MFE program, he worked at Petrofix in San Francisco, where he applied solid econometrics knowledge of financial modeling and commodity hedging strategies. Academically, he dedicated 1 year at the graduate school of economics at Seoul National University to specializing in financial mathematics and econometrics. In his spare time, he enjoys playing golf, cello, snowboarding, and traveling.