UCLA Anderson School of Management has partnered with the Indian School of Business to launch a financial engineering program starting in July.
The joint financial engineering program is a six-month program that will take place at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, India.
“The level of financial and technical savvy required by organizations in today’s global financial markets has accelerated the demand for well-trained financial engineers,” said Judy D. Olian, dean of UCLA Anderson School, in a press release.
The program will help professionals trying to meet the demand for financial engineering skills.
“This program will be extremely beneficial to finance professionals and will equip them with an accurate and precise knowledge of up-to-date financial economics and financial practice,” said M. Rammohan Rao, dean of the Indian School of Business, in the press release.
The desire to create the program came after Olian and some UCLA Anderson faculty members went to India in December 2006, said Bhagwan Chowdhry, professor of finance in the Anderson School and director of the ISB-UCLA Anderson program.
“A team of UCLA MBA students formed a task force to study the feasibility of such a program in early 2007,” Chowdhry said. “UCLA approached Indian School of Business later that summer for a possible partnership. But the final agreement to hold this program jointly was reached only a few weeks ago.”
The financial engineering program will consist of four teaching modules that will last one week each and are delivered only once a month.
After the four intensive modules, students are expected to work on a project supervised by Indian School of Business and Anderson faculty members.
Like UCLA’s Master of Financial Engineering program, the joint program will have an emphasis on quantitative finance.
The teaching modules will deal with core concepts of financial engineering, quantitative asset management and financial risk management, as well as security research, analysis and valuation.
But the program should not be mistaken with the Master of Financial Engineering program.
“Unlike the MFE which grants a Master’s degree, the executive education program confers no degree or certificate. It is also much shorter,” Chowdhry said.
The program is also specifically designed for students who are mid-career professionals within the Fully-Employed and Executive MBA programs at Anderson School of Management.
“Some … students would be going to the Indian School of Business to study in two of the modules in August and July. The remaining participants will be finance professionals working in India and the South Asia region,” Chowdhry said.
The group of students going in July will be the first of many others expected to participate in the program.
“We expect to have 30 to 40 students this year and perhaps 50 to 60 students the next year,” Chowdhry added.