New machine learning centre in the UK

The University of Oxford and an independent alternative investment manager, Man AHL, will expand its centre for machine learning into quantitative finance, which will become part of the university's engineering science department from 1 August, 2016.

Man AHL said the "world-leading academic institute for quantitative finance research", The Oxford-Man Institute (OMI), would become a hub where researchers "focused on machine learning techniques", and could share and leverage data analytics expertise and knowledge.

Man AHL's chief scientist and academic liaison, Dr Anthony Ledford said Man AHL had actively been researching machine learning techniques and applying them in client trading programs for several years.

But the partnership with OMI directly connected them to "cutting-edge quantitative finance research" and world-leading academics in the field, he said.

The hub's existing researchers would be joined by a team of "20 leading machine learning researchers", from Oxford University's department of engineering science's machine learning group, said Man AHL.

They would relocate to Eagle House, in Oxford in the United Kingdom.

OMI was also seeking to appoint two new senior research fellows/associate professors in machine learning, "with a specific focus on quantitative finance", and these roles would be supported by PhD students and postdoctoral research assistants, said Man AHL.

That evolution would strengthen OMI's concentration on data analytics and machine learning and further facilitate "the cross pollination of ideas" and strengthen the centre's "outstanding research programmes", Ledford said.