The Hanlon Financial Systems Center is a faculty-driven, multi-level institutional framework that brings together researchers with expertise in various fields of finance, analytics and information technology with industry partners and funding agencies.
The goals of the center includes providing an inclusive foundation for collective scholarly activity, producing thought leadership in the area of financial systems, and attracting funding to recruit and support faculty and students. The combination of an immersive, technology-centric environment; cutting-edge software tools; and a location a short train or ferry ride from Wall Street helps the Center create unique possibilities for students and faculty alike.
The Hanlon Financial Systems Center features a number of distinguishing characteristics that set it apart from labs and research centers at other universities.
Financial systems today are increasingly interconnected thanks to technology-driven innovations and the global nature of markets. Finance programs at Stevens examine challenges and opportunities from a systemic point of view, giving students greater insights when investigating components of a system, building predictability models and assessing cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
Most academic programs in these disciplines provide the core quantitative finance and financial engineering skills, but Stevens programs also include an emphasis on interdisciplinary skills like management and software engineering to offer students a more complete set of skills. Finance professionals interested in leadership opportunities must have an array of talents in order to address the complexity of the problems they'll face at work.
Stevens' location — just a 10-minute ride from New York City — puts the campus within easy reach of managers and recruiters at some of the biggest finance companies in the world. Managers from UBS, Goldman Sachs, Citi, Accenture, JPMorgan Chase and others make regular visits for executive training, guest lectures, recruiting and research partnerships.
The heart of the center is its two labs, which employ the financial software tools to teach students practices that maintain stability, sustainability and reliability of financial systems. The labs offer an excellent learning environment for students, as well as the investigative tools and data needed to address current and future financial challenges, conduct cutting-edge research, create and refine new products that meet market demand, and collaborate and present findings in real time to audiences around the world.