Jessica James: Managing Director, Senior Quantitative Researcher, Commerzbank

Jessica James is the Senior Quantitative Researcher in the Rates Research team at Commerzbank., where she covers foreign exchange and fixed income.  She joined Commerzbank from Citigroup where she was Global Head of the Quantitative Investor Solutions Group. Previously, she lectured in physics at Trinity College, Oxford.

Significant publications include ‘FX Option Performance’,  ‘Handbook of Foreign Exchange’ (Wiley), ‘Interest Rate Modelling’ (Wiley), and ‘Currency Management’ (Risk books). She is on the Board of the Journal of Quantitative Finance, a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, and is a Visiting Professor at UCL and Cass Business School.

Angela De Martiis: Economist, Associate Director, UBS

I am an Economist by training and I work at UBS Center of Excellence as Lead Analyst, Associate Director. Previously, I worked at UBS New York as Equity Research Scientific Associate within Investment Banking, Global Research. I also worked as Economist and Policy Advisor at the OECD in Paris, France, where I was involved in research projects on market concentration and business dynamism, as Finance Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Financial Management at the University of Bern, Switzerland, and as Visiting Researcher at Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, USA, where I performed quantitative research in corporate finance, macroeconomics, monetary policy, and machine learning, with a focus on financially distressed companies. I was also Research Economist at the Einaudi Research Center where I led projects in economics and finance and carried out data analyses for the public and private sector. Views expressed are my own.

Wafaa Schiefler: Executive Director – Commodities Quantitative Researcher, JP Morgan Chase Speaker

Wafaa Schiefler joined J.P.Morgan in 2011 as a Commodities Quant. She leads the Base Metals, Precious Metals and Agricultural Products Quantitative Research, as well as the Commodities Data Science team. Her main responsibilities include the development and support of pricing and risk management models, and the implementation of data-driven tools to help the Trading and Sales desks. Prior to this, Wafaa was a Quant on Energy. Wafaa is also part of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council of J.P.Morgan. She has been encouraging women to join the world of Quantitative Finance since the beginning of her career and mentored many students. She created a large network of Women in Quantitative Research on LinkedIn (860+ members).

Wafaa started her career in finance in 2008. She holds a MSc in Applied Mathematics from Ecole Centrale Paris and a MSc in Quantitative Finance from University Paris VII.

Nicole Königstein: Chief Data Scientist, Head of AI & Quant Research, Wyden Capital AG

Nicole Königstein is a distinguished Data Scientist and Quantitative Researcher, currently working as Data Science and Technology Lead at impactvise, an ESG analytics company, and as Head of AI and Quantitative Research at Quantmate, an innovative FinTech startup focused on alternative data in predictive modeling. Alongside her roles in these organizations, she serves as an AI consultant across diverse industries, leading workshops and guiding companies from the conceptual stages of AI implementation through to final deployment.

As a guest lecturer, Nicole shares her expertise in Python, machine learning, and deep learning at various universities. She is a regular speaker at renowned AI and Data Science conferences, where she conducts workshops and educational sessions. In addition, she is an influential voice in the data science community, regularly reviewing books in her field and offering her insights and critiques. Nicole is also the author of the well-received online course, “Math for Machine Learning.

Mirela Predescu: Head of RISK Quant Academy, BNP Paribas

Mirela Predescu is the Head of the RISK Quant Academy, leading the knowledge management for the RISK Quant Community at BNP Paribas. Previously she was a manager at BNP Paribas, London, heading a team responsible for market and counterparty risk models for credit and repo products. Prior to BNP Paribas, Mirela has held positions in the portfolio modelling team at Lloyds Banking Group and the quantitative analytics team at Fitch Solutions. Before moving to the financial industry, Mirela was a University Lecturer at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. Mirela holds a PhD in Finance from Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto and an MA in Economics from University of Toronto.

Amira Akkari: Executive Director, JP Morgan

Amira is an Executive Director at JP Morgan CIB. She is one of the leads of the Quantitative Research team for Equity Derivatives Exotics. She has 15 years’ experience in the quant industry and has worked with industry leaders in this space.

The Front Office quant team works closely with traders to enhance and expand Equity models for Exotic products’ risk management. Amira has expanded her focus in the last years to cover AI models and data-driven solutions’ development and adoption for financial applications in Markets.

Models include classic supervised learning as well as reinforcement learning models for derivatives risk management, such as Deep Hedging. JP Morgan was elected Equity House of the Year by Risk Magazine, twice in the last three years; quant innovative models were cited as key factors in this success

Laura Ballotta: Prof. of Mathematical Finance, Bayes Business School (formerly Cass)

Dr Ballotta works in the areas of quantitative finance and risk management. She has written on topics including stochastic modelling for financial valuation and risk management, numerical methods aimed at supporting financial applications, and the interplay between finance and insurance.

Recent major contributions have appeared in Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, European Journal of Operational Research and Quantitative Finance among others.
She serves as associate editor and referee for a number of international journals in the field.

Laura Ballotta obtained her PhD in Mathematical and Computational Methods for Economics and Finance from the Università degli Studi di Bergamo (Italy), following her BSc in Economics from Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Piacenza (Italy), and MSc in Financial Mathematics from the University of Edinburgh – jointly awarded with Heriot-Watt University (UK). Laura has previously held positions at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Piacenza (Italy), and Department of Actuarial Science and Statistics, City University London (UK).

Imane Bakkar: Founder and Managing Director at Logarisk Ltd. 

Imane Bakkar is a risk management expert, and the founder of Logarisk Ltd, a risk advisory start-up.  With nearly 25y of experience in risk management, she has worked as a global head of commodities market risk at a major US bank, as an Equities pricing and Commodities risk quant at a financial software, and as a senior policy maker at a G7 central bank, mainly on financial stability risks related to Asset management, Algorithmic Trading and Traded Risks . She also briefly held roles as a specialist on climate (on a UN related project), as a quant on cross-assets rating models, and as a consulting Director focusing on AI risk management.