The ups and downs of the financial industry from a physicist's perspective will be one of the topics explored during the July 23 lecture "My Manhattan Project: A Physicist's Adventures on Wall Street" at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Nigel Goldenfeld, a physics professor and diversity scholar at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and participating faculty member in a summer physics institute at CU-Boulder, will present the free lecture at 7:30 p.m. in Duane Physics room G1B30 on the CU-Boulder campus.
During his lecture, Goldenfeld will share his personal experience in the business world, and will talk about why so many physicists are now working on Wall Street and in the financial field. Goldenfeld, who specializes in statistical and mathematical physics, is co-founder and managing partner of NumeriX, a high-tech company that markets fast numerical software products for use in a range of industries.
Physicists, once a rarity on Wall Street and in the financial industry, are now sought after to help with investment strategies and to use their statistical expertise to help companies manage investment risk. Goldenfeld will explain why the financial industry is one of the largest employers of physicists and also will talk about how academic physicists can help shape the real world.
Goldenfeld's research is mainly in areas related to condensed matter physics, statistical physics and applied mathematics. He also is interested in quantitative physics and medical physics. The lecture will include a question-and-answer session with the audience.
The lecture is part of the second annual Boulder Summer School for Condensed Matter and Material Physics, hosted by CU-Boulder. This year's school is devoted to nonequilibrium statistical physics and has covered a broad range of familiar phenomena that are still poorly understood like friction, turbulent liquid flow, window and other glasses and even biological systems, according to Leo Radzihovsky, a CU-Boulder physics professor and co-founder of the school.
In 2000 the National Science Foundation provided a $780,000 grant to fund the school for five years. The National Institute for Standards and Technology in Boulder contributed $50,000 and CU-Boulder provided $80,000. Lucent Technologies, IBM and Syracuse University also provide funding.
The school's goal is to enable students to work at the frontiers of science and technology by exposing them to a range of concepts, techniques and applications much broader than any single graduate program or postdoctoral apprenticeship can provide, Radzihovsky said.
Physics professors Steven Girvin at Indiana University, Andrew Millis at Rutgers University and Matthew Fisher at the University of California at Santa Barbara co-founded the school with Radzihovsky.
For more information about the July 23 lecture call (303) 492-6952.