15.04.2026Outstanding Quantitative Finance Master’s Thesis Award 2026

Congratulations to the two winners: Michael Geiser and Anton Aleynikov

The "Outstanding Quantitative Finance Master's Thesis Award 2026" ceremony, held on 16 April 2026, at the University of Zurich (UZH), recognized the exceptional achievements of two former students - now graduates - from the joint Master of Science in Quantitative Finance (MSc QF) program at UZH and ETH.

This fourth edition of the award ceremony celebrates outstanding research in the field of quantitative finance. Prof. Walter Farkas welcomed the guests and introduced the two winners, who gave a brief presentation of their master’s thesis. The program then proceeded to the award ceremony.

The Award Winners

We congratulate the two winners for their contribution:

Anton Aleynikov
Thesis: “From Innovation to Default – Impact of Patent Activity on Credit Risk” supervised by Prof. Dr. Thorsten Hens (Department of Finance, UZH)

Michael Geiser
Thesis: “Deep Hedging the Volume-Weighted Average Price Risk in Order-Driven Markets” supervised by Prof. Dr. Josef Teichmann (Department of Mathematics, ETH)

Prof. Walter Farkas, Program Director Master of Science UZH ETH in Quantitative Finance: “Congratulations to the winners. This is the fourth time this award is given, and the quality is clearly reflected in the recent Risk.net 2026 rating, where we are ranked number one in Europe and fourth worldwide. We are proud that this program, jointly offered by UZH and ETH, successfully bridges strong quantitative skills, typical of ETH graduates, with the financial market understanding of economics and finance graduates.”

He also thanked his colleagues in the program’s Steering Committee
Prof. Dylan Possamaï (ETH Zurich, Department of Mathematics),
Prof. Martin Schweizer (ETH Zurich, Department of Mathematics),
Prof. Felix Kübler, and Prof. Marc Paolella  (UZH, Department of Finance)
for their evaluation and thoughtful deliberation in selecting from a large number of outstanding Master’s thesis projects.

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