Phimac Graduate Studies

PhiMAC aims to attract the best international and Canadian graduate students to McMaster to study the growing research area of financial mathematics, with prime focus on quantitative finance using high level mathematics. Starting with the study of the world's experts in areas including credit risk, portfolio management, risk measures, option pricing and hedging, stochastic processes in finance, we then aim to develop innovative methods for solving a broad range of finance problems.

All students, international and Canadian, will be fully funded for the duration of their program. The admission requirements to join PhiMAC are the same as those of the general mathematics M.Sc.. In addition to the standard requirements, we look for students with a strong background in analysis, probability, applied math, or numerical analysis. Prior exposure to finance and economics is not necessary. MSc Students showing extra initiative and a very strong performance can successfully apply for early transfer to the PhD program.

Our students work at their personal workstations located in the beautiful PhiMAC lab. Each student has a desktop computer giving them access to the full range of software and online resources including a huge number of journal subscriptions. PhiMAC also boasts a small but growing library of the textbooks and journals essential to finance research.

In addition to course and project work, weekly activities centre around the our regular PhiMAC meetings in which members or visitors present material with an aim to provoke critical discussion. Everyone gets regular opportunities to present their work and ideas. These meetings also attract graduate students and faculty from outside the group. The AIMS/PhiMAC seminar series is a forum where we and our visitors have a regular opportunity to present more developed work to a larger departmental audience.

There is a good sense of camaraderie amongst PhiMAC members. We have regular excursions both to local entertainment and further abroad. McMaster is quite close to Toronto and Bay Street, the financial heart of Canada, so we have regular field trips to events in Toronto, for example the Fields Institute Financial Mathematics Seminar Series. We are also an important part of MITACS, which provides us with further opportunities for to connect with applied mathematics students and faculty from across Canada.

Our proximity to Toronto also makes an internship in a financial institution a possibility for the motivated student, and we have a large number of industry contacts keen to hire our students, both as interns, and as permanent employees.