Data Science & Machine Learning Industry Group

Harsh Prasad

Vice President, Model Risk Management - Morgan Stanley

Harsh started his career as a programmer focussed on developing data driven algos in the areas of speech recognition, image processing and bioinformatics. He then moved to financial risk management and over the last 15 years has worked in various roles through the life cycle of models and has been at the forefront of applying machine learning in finance. His current research interest includes Model Explainability, Transfer Learning, Reinforcement Learning, Large Language Models etc. He currently works with Morgan Stanley in Model Risk Management and is also a visiting lecturer with universities and training institutions.

Harsh completed the Certificate in Quantitative Finance in 2016. 

Harsh is the Chair of the Data Science & Machine Learning Industry Group.

Andrew Brown

Executive Director, Alternate Solutions Group and Simplii Financial 
 
Andrew Brown is an Executive Director for Machine Learning in CIBC Capital Markets’ Alternate Solutions Group. Since joining CIBC, he has worked in a number of analytics and quantitative roles in Risk Management, Treasury and Enterprise Advanced Analytics. 

Andrew received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Toronto under the direction of Prof. Geoffrey Hinton. He holds an MSc and BSc in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Manitoba. Andrew completed the Certificate in Quantitative Finance with distinction.

Ksenia Ponomareva

Partner, Riskcare

Ksenia is a partner at Riskcare, fintech engineering and consultancy firm, which she joined in 2012 as a quant and, while running over 40 projects, rapidly moved on to lead the Quantitative Analytics department globally as well as covering AI and ML programmes.
 
She is a Cambridge and Stanford University graduate with several academic and industry journal publications. PhD, MMATH, MA, BA in Mathematics, CQF (Wilmott Award for Excellence) and Artificial Intelligence graduate level educated.

Ksenia is passionate about vast applications of AI and problem-solving capabilities it provides in the finance world and beyond.

Sonia Arora

Employer Relationship Manager, CQF, Fitch Learning

Sonia Arora completed her Masters at the University of London and previous tenures include the London School of Economics and Cardinal Health. Sonia has 15 years of experience in both the corporate environment and academia and possesses excellent connections in the industry globally. In the last few years Sonia held positions at various graduate institutions heading their career departments and managing corporate relations. She has taught on Business Communications courses and implemented institutional soft skills training programs. Sonia heads career support services at the CQF Institute and manages employer relations, the Mentorship Program, careers events and clinics and the Academic Partners.

Sonia provides the secretariat for the Data Science & Machine Learning Industry Group.

Mark Lefevre

Vice President - JP Morgan

Mark Lefevre is currently a Vice President at JP Morgan. 

Previously, Mark worked for the Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ (BTMU) in Tokyo on the electronic Foreign Exchange (eFX ) desk. He has also completed the Certificate in Quantitative Finance (CQF) program.

Subramanian Iyer

Senior Director, Data Science - Target