Wednesday, Sept 4, 2019
Quantitative Financial Analyst - A Career Guide for PhDs in the Sciences
Mircea Marinescu, Former Managing Director at Bank of AmericaThe financial Industry provides unique career opportunities for candidates with strong mathematical and programming skills, e.g., PhDs in Physics, Mathematics, Engineering, etc. Scientific thinking has proved to be a vital asset for the mathematical modeling of financial instruments and strategies. For the past 30+ years, the Quantitative Financial Analyst (or “Quant” for short) profession has been open for candidates with high academic degrees and the desire to apply their technical skills in the investment and insurance industries. This presentation endeavors to bring light to the Quant profession as a career choice, exposing its peculiarities relative to various other segments of the industry. Its main objective is to aid prospective candidates in forming an understanding of the various opportunities provided by the Financial Industry. A large part of the presentation will be devoted to the topic of how to approach successfully an entry level Wall St. interview. Both the candidate’s and the hiring manager’s perspectives will be discussed. The schedule allows ample time for questions.
Return to the 2019-2020 AMOP Seminar ScheduleWednesday, Dec. 4, 2019
Dissociation Dynamics in Electron Attachment and Photoexcitation Reactions
Daniel Slaughter, Lawrence Berkeley National LaboratoryLow energy electrons have importance in chemical processes initiated by ionizing radiation, because electrons are produced in high abundance with low energies in the range for electron-molecule resonances. These resonances drive molecular dissociation by inelastic scattering and dissociative electron attachment (DEA). In DEA, the energy of a free electron is efficiently converted into vibrational kinetic energy and dissociation into two or more atomic or molecular fragments. The process exhibits strong coupling between electronic and nuclear motion, resulting in rich nonadiabatic dynamics such as conical intersections or electron transfer between electronic states of the transient anion, that are very difficult, if not impossible to model without detailed experimental data1. New anion fragment momentum imaging experiments will be presented for DEA reactions involving formic acid, which is the simplest organic acid. A remarkable site-selectivity is found allowing, the electron attachment energy to control the relative yields C-H and O-H dissociation, producing neutral radicals HOCO or HCOO. Recent ultrafast laser pump-probe experiments will also be reported2, where molecular dynamics of excited molecules are studied by time resolved photoelectron spectroscopy (TRPES). When correlated with mass-resolved ion yields measured in the same experiment, different dissociation channels can be assigned to specific electronic states and decay pathways involving conical intersections. Ongoing developments in TRPES and particle momentum imaging will soon enable ultrafast time resolved measurements of DEA dynamics.
Return to the 2019-2020 AMOP Seminar Schedule