WRITTEN BY: Matt Busekroos
Growing up in India, Manish Singh used to read news articles featuring researchers from MIT creating projects that people generally see in sci-fi films. It always fascinated him and motivated him to work hard and aim to study at MIT to be part of the action.
Prior to MIT, Singh completed his undergraduate program at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi with a major in electrical engineering and a minor in computer science. Singh’s undergraduate research centered on developing deep learning models for memory constrained devices. Following his undergraduate studies, Singh worked as a quantitative researcher in WorldQuant Research India Pvt. Ltd.
Currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), Singh tries to solve FinTech problems using artificial intelligence. AI for finance has the ability to create new and better investment opportunities that some people might be unaware of, according to Singh. It can help them find data-driven relationships between the companies and it can also assist in explaining the behavior of portfolios that traditional models cannot explain.
Singh works on problems, keeping industry constraints in mind, to make sure that the methods they come up with are useful and create a real impact. Professor Andrew Lo advises Singh and Singh appreciates Lo’s availability despite having such a demanding schedule.
"[Professor Lo] finds time to meet his students whenever we need any input or guidance from him,” Singh said.
There is a wide scope using AI in FinTech that researchers have yet to explore, according to Singh. One of the key challenges in the field consists of dealing with low signal data (noisy) and blackbox nature of AI methods in general. These challenges inspire Singh to work on the problems and make worthwhile contributions in the field.
After completing his PhD, Singh said he would like to work in the finance industry and later look for opportunities at global financial institutions, such as the World Bank, where he said he can create some impact.Check out https://lfe.mit.edu/ for more information on the projects Singh’s group has been working on.