New SFI Cluster launched at UCD CSI

The Tanaiste Mary Coughlan, Minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment, announced the establishment of FMC2 a new Science Foundation Ireland Strategic Research Cluster (SRC) on 14 October 2009.   The Financial Mathematics and Computation Cluster (FMC²) with funding of €4.7 Million is a research collaboration between Industry, University College Dublin, Dublin City University, and NUI Maynooth. FMC² will create a globally-leading centre of financial research which will provide a critical underpinning for the future development of, and employment growth in, the international financial services sector in Ireland.

Dr. Michael O'Neill of UCD's School of Computer Science & Informatics leads a strategically significant collaboration between FMC² and a leading global investment manager, Pioneer Investments. The collaboration will see the latest advances made in Dr. O'Neill's Natural Computing Research & Applications group (http://ncra.ucd.ie) applied to the challenging and dynamic environment of finance.  The software developed by Dr. O'Neill's group is perfect for these kinds of environments as it embodies the essence of the biological process of evolution to generate solutions to problems which can adapt and compete for survival in a form of evolutionary arms race.

The new research cluster, lead by Prof. Anthony Brabazon, brings together complementary expertise in financial mathematics, financial economics and computer science to create a multi-disciplinary research centre with the critical mass to be globally competitive. The cluster will also embed significant linkages with a range of industrial partners, ensuring the direct industry-relevance of its research activities. In order to provide a clear focus for the research activities of FMC², we initially concentrate on the development of theory and methods for the task of asset management. This area is chosen as it is one of the primary activities within the IFSC, it offers high value-add, and has substantial growth potential. In addition to its practical significance,activities in the asset management encapsulate a wide variety of important scientific research questions in mathematical finance and computation.

For further information on FMC² please refer to the cluster website http://www.fmc-cluster.org

More details and examples of a range of real-world application areas (including Architectural Design, Video Games, Animation, and Music) of Dr. O'Neill's Natural Computing Research & Applications group can be found on their website http://ncra.ucd.ie