TEMG4952 Special Project: “Financial Investment Prototyping for UBS Zurich” was an experimental learning project for students to develop software to predict high potential Fintech startups from Crunchbase data and public records. UBS Zurich has partnered with Dual Degree Program in Technology & Management (T&M-DDP) to work on projects that encourage entrepreneurship and innovation since 2017 as part of their “UBS Next” initiative.

Students from T&M-DDP were formed into six teams to experiment with different pre-processing ideas, followed by explainable AI algo’s to look for features that correlated with success in the back-end. Data was then sent to the front-end for investment analysts to manipulate and track as a portfolio. Teams were mentored by UBS experts from UBS Next, the Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence, and other UBS innovation experts. They held weekly check-ins where the teams were able to refine approaches and test hypotheses with their mentors. 3 T&M-DDP students from previous UBS projects were hired to conduct pre-project workshops on selected AI and front-end tools.

On 28 January 2021, the final presentations were held online in front of a global UBS judging panel, including Mr. Matteo BERNARDIS, Head of Strategy & Resource Optimization, Mr. Daniel SEIGERS, Head Group COO Strategy & Special Projects, Ms. Veronica LANGE, Head of Digital Engagement, Chief Digital Office, Ms. Natasha BURKOFF, Director of Innovation, Chief Digital Office, Ms. Annika SCHROEDER, Head of AI Center of Excellence and Ms. Helen WANG, AI Specialist, AI Center of Excellence.

Mr. BERNARDIS was very impressed overall by the great level of idea generation on the modeling side and possible workarounds to the limitations in the datasets, commented that “Some teams went a long way to create imaginative GUIs. Especially when I remind myself that they are still completing university and have so limited business experience, it is so inspiring! ”.

Congratulations to the winning team of Laurence NG, Jaron ZHU, Srijan SAXENA, Akshat BANSAL, Emily WONG!

To learn more about the project with UBS, please visit https://www.ubs.com/global/en/our-firm/what-we-do/technology/article-display-adp/global/en/our-firm/what-we-do/technology/2021/university-students.html?caasID=CAAS-ActivityStream .