Sample Projects

High impact student projects with the WPI Wall Street – FinTech Project Center, the Center for Industrial Mathematics & Statistics, and the WPI FinTech Collaborative include important initiatives that make a genuine difference at major financial services institutions and FinTech leaders like Angelo Gordon, Vestigo Ventures, State Street, or BNP Paribas.  

Many of these projects have solved significant challenges at sponsor firms, and they have resulted in major management implementations and organizational cost savings. They also present an opportunity for project sponsors to see WPI students in action and consider them for possible employment in the future. To view Submitted Papers and read about Fintech Projects delivered in recent years please click HERE. Included below are just a few examples of our projects.

pexels-photo-373543Big Data Analytics and FinTech Venture Capital

Graduate and undergraduate student teams partnered with a venture capital (VC) investment firm specializing in FinTech portfolio businesses and an affiliated big data analytics company on an interrelated series of projects. The teams analyzed data-sets from the big data firm to improve VC firm deal intake and to improve data-set quality through a device fingerprinting strategy.

As a result:

  • The VC firm implemented the WPI student-designed interactive deal website.
  • WPI student-generated data was used in investment meetings. 
  • The VC firm refined its venture capital investment intake process.
  • Based on the WPI student team’s analysis, the big data firm initiated implementation of an algorithm designed by the WPI student team.

pexels-photo-69760Bloomberg Replicator

Bloomberg Professional is a third-party trading application used by the trading staff, middle and back office users, and developers at many financial institutions, including one of our project sponsors. It is used for many different functions, including viewing market data, conducting electronic trading with customers, and reviewing historical data.

For this project, a student team developed an application that imitates the functionality of the Bloomberg Bond Security Description Screen, Bond Yield and Spread Screen, Credit Default Swap Security Description Screen and the Credit Default Swap Valuation Screen using the sponsor firm’s in-house coding platform and fixed income data sources.

The student-developed application:

  • Allows the project sponsor firm to validate the quality of in-house reference data and risk analytics
  • Substantially increases the number of employees who have access to this internal data set.

Picture of smartphone and tablet with financial data on the screen.

Mobile Reporting Application

A sponsoring firm used an external service platform to report and track application issues internally. The platform was available on work-based computers with only limited mobile device access. With the increasing use of personal smartphones, specifically Apple and Android devices, it became imperative to provide this platform on these devices as well. The team was tasked with creating a live prototype application to fill this void.

The outcome of the project was a prototype application that works on iOS devices and reports real-time incident data.

pexels-photo-210607Tactical Data Management

This project focused on delivering a business intelligence system to the project sponsor that would store data for easy access by end users, while providing important auditing information for internal business clients. The solution integrated Microsoft Excel, Tableau, a Python module, and a standalone CSV module that could each communicate with a central database. By normalizing each data item, the data were independent of the originating program and could be successfully imported by any of the appropriate parts of the system.

This system will:

  • Help facilitate collaboration within the organization,
  • Reduce the time spent on data intensive tasks, and
  • Provide important records for compliance purposes.

pexels-photo-533189Workflow and Issue Management

This project improved workflow and issue management across national borders and among group divisions within the project sponsor bank.

The project resulted in the creation of a best practices document (“BPD”) compiling suggestions for enhancements to the existing issue management module, and to develop mock-up functional screens.

Data Driven Decision-Making

This project investigated data reporting in various fixed income information technology management systems at a sponsor bank to produce optimized project reports for effective decision-making. The student project team conducted a series of interviews to understand the systems usage and developed conclusions and recommendations to improve project reporting for data driven decision-making.

The students created a proposed reporting template and recommended future improvements to the project sponsor.

WPI FINTECH PROJECT CENTER CONTACTS

Rob Sarnie | Professor of Practice of Finance/FinTech/MIS (The Business School) 

Marcel Blais | Professor of Teaching (Mathematical Sciences/Data Science)

Wilson Wong | Associate Teaching Professor (Computer Science)