Computational finance

Your head start to financial services

To succeed in the modern finance industry, you need a mixture of competencies rooted in finance, economics and computer science. The explosion of data and computer power over recent years and decades has made classical quantitative finance techniques obsolete.

At Essex, we give you rigorous training in these disciplines by covering principles of quantitative finance and microeconomics alongside current computational skills. We focus on established and emergent technologies to deal with big data, such as machine learning, and decentralised exchanges, including blockchain.

If you've got a quantitative background, our Masters courses give you advanced training in computational finance, algorithmic trading or financial technology. You'll receive practical hands-on instruction with a focus on problem-solving skills that will prepare you for a future career in the finance sector.

You will be part of our Centre for Computational Finance and Economic Agents, which is an innovative and lab-based teaching and research centre, with an international reputation for leading-edge, interdisciplinary work combining economic and financial modelling with computational implementation.

Take your research further

Our Centre for Computational Finance and Economic Agents, which is an innovative and lab-based teaching and research centre, offers research supervision in topics such as: algorithmic game theory; theoretical computer science; AI for finance; blockchain; high-frequency finance; and financial mathematics.

We provide you with a vibrant and multidisciplinary research environment and many of our PhD students publish papers in prestigious international conferences which often attracts the attention of industry and government around the world. Our graduates have gone on to become quantitative analysts, portfolio managers and software engineers at institutions such as HSBC and Mitsubishi UFJ Securities.

Start your application with us

Explore our Computer Science research by theme or your area of interest and find a supervisor that can support your through your studies. More information can be found about research degrees on our school pages. Our courses below will help guide you through the various research degree programmes we offer.