Pictured far right: Giordano Lombardo, Chairman of the Directors, Pioneer Investment Management with Professor Anthony Brabazon, Director of UCD Natural Computing Research and Applications Group, Mary Coughlan, Tanaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade & Employment and Professor Frank Gannon, Director of SFI.
In a Government initiative to safeguard and expand Ireland’s international financial services capabilities, the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Mary Coughlan, TD, announced the establishment of a new Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Strategic Research Cluster - the Financial Mathematics and Computation Cluster (FMC) involving a Government investment of over €4 million with an additional contribution of over €600,000 from industry partners Pioneer Investments, Ryan Capital Ltd and The Institute of Bankers in Ireland.
The FMC² research cluster will create a centre of financial research excellence by bringing together complementary expertise in financial mathematics, financial economics and computer science.
Led by UCD’s Anthony Brabazon, Professor of Accountancy, UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School and a member of UCD CASL the research team will involve two CASL colleagues; Dr Michael O’Neill, UCD School of Computer Science & Informatics, Dr David Edelman, UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School as well as Professor John Cotter, UCD Michael Smurfit Business School in collaboration with Dublin City University, NUI Maynooth, the University of Ulster, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Columbia University, Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Technical University of Kaiserslautern, Germany.
Announcing the funding and emphasising the strategic importance of FMC² the Tánaiste said the IFSC currently generates approximately €22 billion in services exports annually. Today, the establishment of FMC² further builds on this and dispels any notion that scientific research and investment is primarily theoretical and somewhat removed from the day-to-day economic activity of our country. Global events of the past 18 months have shown us just how interconnected different sectors of our society really are in an economic content. Such interdependency highlights the need for diverse disciplines to converge and work in unison towards recovery. This new SFI Strategic Research Cluster does just that, as it brings together complementary expertise in financial mathematics, financial economics and computer science to create a multi-disciplinary research centre.”
Research at FMC² will initially concentrate on the development of theory and methods for the task of asset management to greatly enhance the development of, and future employment growth, in the international financial services industry in Ireland.
Professor Anthony Brabazon, head of the FMC² research team added, “This cluster forms a pivotal element of national infrastructure, creating a critical-mass research centre which will undertake research and training for the financial services industry. A prime objective of the research cluster is to support industry product and process innovation in order to grow employment in the financial services sector in Ireland.”
