Ali Hirsa

Dr. Ali Hirsa is a Professor of Professional Practice in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at Columbia University, where he has been a faculty member since 2017, having previously served as an Adjunct Professor since 2000. He is also the Managing Partner at Sauma Capital, LLC, a New York hedge fund. Dr. Hirsa's expertise lies in financial engineering, with a focus on asset pricing, derivatives, and optimization methods in asset management.He holds a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Maryland at College Park and an MBA with an emphasis on Finance. Dr. Hirsa has extensive industry experience, having held significant positions at firms such as Morgan Stanley and Banc of America Securities, where he developed quantitative trading strategies.Dr. Hirsa teaches several courses on Coursera, including "Introduction to Financial Engineering and Risk Management" and "Advanced Topics in Derivative Pricing." His research interests include algorithmic trading, machine learning, and computational finance, and he has authored multiple publications in these areas.