CHENNAI : Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) has launched a new Interdisciplinary Dual Degree (IDDD) program on ‘Quantitative Finance.’ This course would be jointly offered by Departments of Management Studies, Computer Science and Engineering and Mathematics for B.Tech dual degree students.

The IDDD on quantitative Finance course is open to undergraduate students of all branches of engineering disciplines at IIT Madras. Existing students can choose to pursue the IDDD on Quantitative Finance from the Sixth Semester. The course will have an intake of 25 students. The first batch of students would be joining on Jan 2023.

The course has been designed to enable students to more easily adapt to new developments in finance and bridge the gap between the application of modern product and process technologies and state-of-the-art finance. The course requires relatively extensive use of quantitative methods and theoretical reasoning.

Highlighting the unique aspects of this course, Prof. Prathap Haridoss, Dean (Academic Courses), IIT Madras, said, “This course belongs to the IDDD (Interdisciplinary Dual Degree) family of five-year programmes of IIT Madras.”

IIT Madras has a total of 12  Interdisciplinary Dual Degrees (IDDD), as on date (December 2022) in cutting-edge areas like Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning, Data Science, Robotics and Electric Vehicles, among others.

Elaborating on the benefits of this course, Prof. M. Thenmozhi, Head, Department of Management Studies (DoMS), IIT Madras, “This course is ideal for students preparing for careers involving design and management of new financial instruments, development of innovative methods for measuring or predicting and managing risk. The main focus will be to provide insights on advanced financial tools and techniques and their applications.”

Prof. B. Ravindran, Head, Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science and AI, IIT Madras, said, “The course exposes the students to the latest data science and AI techniques that are applied in the field of quantitative finance.”

Further, Prof. V. Vetrivel, Head, Department of Mathematics, IIT Madras, said, “The course will impart expertise on mathematical modelling on asset pricing and measurement of risk.”

There will be an emphasis on both developing the tools and the mind set of financial practitioner as well as examining specific applications in the form of examples and several case discussions. Undergraduate students opting for this course will start the courses from the sixth semester. During the fifth year, they will undertake a project for six months with industry using the tools and techniques learned during the course.

The Unique Aspects of this course include:

Ø  An unique combination of technology and finance enables the students to contribute significantly for digitalization of  finance and  banking industry

Ø  The graduating students will find lucrative opportunities in Fintech companies, financial intermediaries and portfolio management  companies

Ø  The course facilitates budding entrepreneurs to come up with innovative products in the finance industry and promotes start-up  venture ideas