Outstanding Quantitative Finance Master’s Thesis Award 2025

The "Outstanding Quantitative Finance Master's Thesis Award 2025" ceremony, held on 14 May 2025, at the University of Zurich (UZH), recognized the exceptional achievements of three students from the joint Master of Science in Quantitative Finance (MSc QF) program at UZH and ETH.

This third edition of the award ceremony, once again presented in collaboration with and sponsored by our industry partner Robeco, celebrates outstanding research in the field of quantitative finance. The event also serves as a platform to bring together sustainable investment experts from academia and industry, promoting collaboration and advancing research in this area.

Prof. Walter Farkas welcomed the guests and gave a brief overview of the current research focus of the Master's course in Quantitative Finance, emphasizing the importance of research in this area.
Following the introduction, Morgan Williams, Head of SI Data Engineering, Robeco Switzerland, delivered an engaging talk titled "Data Science and Engineering with a focus on SI topics such as Carbon and Biodiversity".
The program then proceeded to the award ceremony, led by David Hrdina, Managing Director, General Manager Robeco Switzerland, Chair of the Executive Committee and Walter Farkas.

The Award Winners

We congratulate the following winners for their contribution:

Andreas Stavropoulos
Thesis: “Aspects of Bubbles in Financial Markets” supervised by Prof. Dr. Martin Schweizer (Department of Mathematics, ETH)

Julius Raschke
Thesis: “Deep Reinforcement Learning: Inspirations from Multi-Strategy Pod shops”, supervised by Prof. Erich Walter Farkas (Department of Finance, UZH)

(Prof. Farkas accepted the prize for the absent winner, Julius Raschke)

Juraj Zelman
Thesis: “Reinforcement Learning for High-Frequency Market Making” supervised by Prof. Dr. Josef Teichmann (Department of Mathematics, ETH)

Prof. Erich Walter Farkas, Program Director Master of Science UZH ETH in Quantitative Finance, said: “Congratulations to the winners, well deserved! I would like to thank my colleagues on the program’s Steering Committee — Prof. Dylan Possamaï (ETH Zurich, Department of Mathematics), Prof. Felix Kübler, and Prof. Marc Paolella — for their evaluation and thoughtful deliberation in selecting from a large number of outstanding Master’s thesis projects. A big thank you also goes to our colleagues from Robeco who made this initiative possible."

David Hrdina, General Manager of Robeco Switzerland, added: “On behalf of Robeco, I’m proud to congratulate Julius, Juraj, and Andreas for their impressive contributions to quantitative finance. Our collaboration aims to unite top experts in sustainable investing from both academia and industry in a truly interdisciplinary way. This partnership not only advances research and its practical application but also strengthens Zurich and Switzerland’s position as a leading hub for sustainable finance.”

We look forward to upcoming research and award-winning thesis in the field of quantitative finance next year!