Tom - AHL

Education: University of Sheffield, MEng Control Engineering (2002)

PhD: Cardiff University, Signal Processing (2006)

Current business area: Research

Location: London

Hobbies and interests: Climbing

I really enjoy doing research so, after reading an article about how AHL were looking for people with a physical sciences background to do financial research, I applied for a research analyst role with AHL. I wanted to apply the skills I had learned to one of science's most challenging problems - predicting financial markets.

I look at how financial markets behave and design systematic trading strategies to exploit predictable behaviour. The markets and the state of the art techniques used to predict them are constantly evolving and so we need a sustained research effort in order to remain at the cutting edge. It's easy to see the attraction of working on such an interesting problem in one of the world's top hedge funds.

I've attended a few conferences and courses, but the real learning process has been on the job. It's very much a meritocracy here, which means I'm gradually taking on more responsibility and setting the direction of future research. I'm never stuck in a routine and, if I have an idea, I can follow it through to see if it works. I can always chat to other researchers about my ideas and we frequently make progress by bouncing ideas off each other.