Since He Lu graduated from the MFM over 7 years ago he has been involved in leading many analytics, portfolio management, product development, and data science initiatives. He worked as a quant developer at a proprietary trading firm in Chicago and in an energy software solutions company  in Minneapolis.  He also spent 7 years involved as a Quant, a CTO, and a Software Development Engineer in the mortgage industry.  He worked in a large bank, a mortgage advisory firm, and was one of the founders of a fintech company.  He Lu is now out in Silicon Valley, taking a break and learning new skills while he prepares for his next venture.

"I wanted to be better prepared to be quant. I knew I would strengthen my understanding of financial engineering and still be able to leverage my computer engineering background at UMN’s MFM.  The program has continued to change with the times and has just recently added data science and machine learning (ML) into its curriculum.  The skills a student builds in the MFM include very strong quantitative modeling skills, data science and risk analytics within the context of quantitative finance.  These skills are also very transferrable to other fields and in particular the domain of data science and big tech.  The program also holds innovative workshops on ML as well as annual modeling workshops.  I have been fortunate to be invited various times to be a project quant mentor in the winter modeling workshop. I enjoy being back in touch with students, former classmates, and many of my professors who are still with the program.  During the MFM I really enjoyed (and still periodically attend) the weekly quant seminar (when they are virtual), which continues to give me new learning experiences and a chance to connect with the broad network of MFM colleagues all over the world. "