Thursday, November 5, 2026
Stevens Institute of Technology
1 Castle Point Terrace, Hoboken, NJ 07030
University Center Building, Tech Flex Room
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Zoom Info
Password: CRAFT26#
Directions
Directions: Viewed detailed directions
Meeting Room: Techflex Room at the Stevens University Center Complex
Parking: Please park in the Babbio Garage
Accommodations
W Hoboken (closest hotel to event): 349.00 - 369.00 USD per night
Last Day to Book: Wednesday, October 14, 2026
Book your group rate for Stevens Institute Of Technology
Sheraton Weehawken (second closest hotel to event): 249.00 - 335.00 USD per night
Last Day to Book : TBA
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Conference Overview
This meeting is jointly hosted by the Stevens Institute of Technology and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. CRAFT is an industry-university cooperative research center funded by the National Science Foundation.
Welcome addresses by CRAFT, RPI and Stevens leadership
Keynote address by William Cong, President’s Chair Professor in Finance, Computing and Data Science at Nanyang Technological University
Keynote address by Daniel S Marvin, Partner, Ashley M Pusey, Associate, Kennedys
Research Proposal Presentations
CRAFT Industry Advisory Board meetings are bi-annual and take place on a Spring/Fall cycle. Fintech research project proposals will be presented at each meeting during Day 1 and then discussed, voted on and selected by the Industry Advisory Board in a closed session.
To become a CRAFT Industry Partner, or to learn more about the Center, please contact [email protected]
Featured Speakers
Steve Yang, CRAFT Director, Associate Professor, Stevens Institute of Technology
Mohammed Zaki, CRAFT Site Director, Professor and Department Head, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
George Calhoun, CRAFT Managing Director, Professor, Stevens Institute of Technology
Liad Wagman, Dean of Lally School of Management, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
GJ de Vreede, Dean of School of Business, Stevens Institute of Technology
William Cong, President’s Chair Professor in Finance, Computing and Data Science at Nanyang Technological University
Daniel S Marvin, Partner, Kennedys
Ashley M Pusey, Associate, Kennedys
CRAFT Leadership Bios
Steve Yang, CRAFT Director, Associate Professor, Stevens Institute of Technology
Dr. Steve Yang is an Associate Professor of the School of Business at Stevens Institute of Technology. He holds a Ph.D. in Systems and Information Engineering from University of Virginia with concentration on Financial Engineering. Dr. Steve Yang is currently the Director of the Center for Research toward Advancing Financial Technologies established by Stevens Institute of Technology and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, co-sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Dr. Steve Yang’s research has been focused on understanding markets’ irrationality and impact on trading, portfolio, risk management, and systemic risk using decision science tools such as Markov decision processes, reinforcement learning and other artificial intelligence (AI) methods. His research has been funded by NSF, DoD, IRRC, IAAER, CFTC, Accenture, KPMG, SWIFT, etc.
Mohammed Zaki, CRAFT Site Director, Professor and Department Head, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Mohammed J. Zaki is a Professor and Department Head of Computer Science at RPI. He received his Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University of Rochester in 1998. His research interests focus novel data mining and machine learning techniques, particularly for learning from graph structured and textual data, with applications in bioinformatics, personal health and financial analytics. He has around 300 publications (and six patents), including the Data Mining and Machine Learning textbook (2nd Edition, Cambridge University Press, 2020). He has served as program chair for most of the major conferences in data mining and knowledge management, such as SDM, SIGKDD, CIKM and ICDM. He is currently serving on the Board of Directors for ACM SIGKDD - the special interest group on knowledge discovery and data science. He was a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award and the Department of Energy Early Career Principal Investigator Award. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the ACM and a Fellow of the AAAS.
George Calhoun, CRAFT Managing Director, Professor, Stevens Institute of Technology
Dr. George Calhoun is a Co-Founder of InterDigital Communications Corporation (NASDAQ: IDCC), which currently has a market cap of $1.5 billion. He was vice chairman of Geotek Communications and was chairman of the company’s joint venture with a branch of the Government of Israel. Dr. Calhoun was the chairman and CEO of Illinois Superconductor Corporation (AMEX: ISO), a public company focused on the application of high-temperature superconducting materials and advanced signal processing techniques.