About us
MCFG is one of the longest-established research groups in the field in the world. Research in the subject began in the late 1980s, driven by Jeff Dewynne, Sam Howison and Paul Wilmott. The group has grown over the intervening two decades to become one of the largest and leading groups in the world, in particular boosted by the recent appointments of Xunyu Zhou as the Nomura Chair in Mathematical Finance, Hanqing Jin and Jan Obloj as University Lecturers, Vicky Henderson as SRF, Dmitry Kramkov as part-time professor, and the arrival of Thaleia Zariphopoulou as the Man Chair of Quantitative Finance. Currently led by Xunyu Zhou, the group has 15 faculty members, a Nomura Research Fellow, and around 25 DPhil students. It is a particular strength of the group that all of its faculty members are internationally recognised experts in core mathematical fields (such as stochastic analysis, stochastic control, numerical methods, partial differential equations, mathematical modelling, and operations research) relevant to finance, and this broad knowledge base is used to investigate a wide spectrum of problems in Mathematical Finance. For details please visit our research pages.
The flagship of the MCFG is the Nomura Centre for Mathematical Finance, which was established in 2001 with the support of the Nomura International plc, with the aim of promoting research in mathematics and finance and a special emphasis on approaches that combine practical relevance with mathematical interest. The Centre hosts an annual Nomura Lecture which has been given by some of the best minds in the area, including Nobel Laureates Robert Merton, Daniel Kahneman, and Harry Markowitz. It also supports a weekly Nomura Seminar with an array of distinguished speakers from both academia and industry, as well as a bi-weekly internal seminar series. There is a lively visitor programme in conjunction with the Nomura seminar.
MCFG offers a number of graduate study opportunities. It runs both full-time and part-time MSc programmes and every year a number of students are admitted to the DPhil (PhD) programme.