Alumni Hear About Market Turbulence
Several hundred SEAS alumni in the financial services industry gathered at Goldman Sachs in early September to hear Columbia-affiliated speakers address the topic,Navigating Turbulent Markets.The program was moderated by Emanuel Derman, professor of industrial engineering and operations research and director of the School’s highly-ranked Financial Engineering Program.
Giving their views on the market place were panelists N.P. Narvekar, CEO of Columbia Investment Management Company, and SEAS alumni Armen A.Avanessians MS’83, Managing Director, Fixed Income Currency and Commodities at Goldman Sachs; Atul Khanna ’83, CEO of Rockbay Capital Management; and Peter K. Scaturro ’82, MS’85, global head of Goldman Sachs Private Wealth Management.
At an earlier program in June, Associate Professor Steven Kou of the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research was the invited speaker at a special event hosted by the School’s Engineering Annual Fund.The reception, the final one of the fiscal year, was at the Rock Center Café in New York’s Rockefeller Center.
The event provided an opportunity for alumni guests to meet and speak with Dr. Kou, SEAS Interim Dean Gerald Navratil and SEAS students in an informal setting. Dr. Kou spoke about the current financial turmoil and his related research on modeling collateralized debt obligations in today’s markets and answered questions from the audience.
The Engineering Annual Fund, which successfully raised a total of more than $1.4 million last fiscal year, supports needblind admissions for undergraduates, fellowships for the best graduate students, recruitment and retention of top faculty, enhancements to lab facilities and breakthrough research. It also is a primary source of funding for the School’s new financial aid initiatives that no longer expect parents with calculated incomes below $60,000 to contribute any income or assets to tuition, room, board, mandatory fees and personal expenses.
