Team - Ask.ai

Lennart John Baals

Work
Centuros Consult Gmb

Education
PhD in Quantitative Finance and Risk Management (University of Twente and Bern University of Applied Science, ongoing)
PhD in Finance (University of Dublin, Trinity College, 2022)
MS in Finance (Trinity College Dublin, 2021)
BS in Business Administration (University of Mannheim, 2018)

Miao Wang

Work

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Yale University

Virginia Tech

GE Aviation

China Construction Bank

Education

MS in Operations Research (Columbia University)

MA in Statistics (Columbia University)

BS in Computational and Applied Mathematics (Virginia Tech)

Noah Dawang

Work

Wisdom Capital

McGill University Health Centre

University of Waterloo

Aon plc

Education

MS in Financial Engineering (Columbia University, 2023)

Bachelors in Mathematics majoring in Mathematical Physics and a minor in Statistics (University of Waterloo, 2022)

Yiting Liu

Education
PhD candidate (University of Twente)
Master of Science, Quantitative Finance (University of Manchester, 2022)
Bachelor of Science, Statistics (Fudan University, 2021)

Satyan Malhotra, Chief Executive Officer

Prior to founding Ask2.ai, Mr. Malhotra founded Caspian Private Equity in 2008 and was its President until it merged with EuroPE and EagleAsia to form Flexstone Partners in 2019. He was the Managing Partner of Flexstone Partners until June 2021. He remained as a non-executive Senior Advisor, on the US Investment Committee and the Global Investment Advisory Committee until June 2024. At the time of transition to the non-executive role, Flexstone Partners was a global Asset Manager with over $8.4bn in assets under management across Private Equity, Real Estate, Private Debt and Infrastructure. He served on the Global Investment Advisory Committee, the US Investment Committee, the Audit Committee and the Compensation Committee. He was also responsible for the firm’s operations, business development and new product offerings.

Prior and concurrent to founding Caspian Private Equity, until January 2012, he also served as a Partner and President of Caspian Capital Management, that managed as much as $2.2Bn of alternative assets including fixed income portfolios and quantitative trading strategies. Caspian Capital Management also provided non-discretionary advisory on as much as $3Bn in structured products on funds of hedge fund programs. Prior to joining Caspian Capital Management in 2002, he was a Senior Manager with the Global Risk Management Solutions consulting practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers. In that capacity, he worked with financial institutions, corporations and treasuries on a variety of risk management, portfolio and strategic initiatives.

Mr Malhotra studied at Columbia Business School, Virginia Tech, University of Delhi and Mayo College. He also has a Financial Risk Manager (FRM) certification from the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP). He serves on various company boards and has authored several research pieces on investments and risk management.

Ivan Correa

Work
Credicorp Capital
AFP Cuprum
Altis Servicios Financieros

Education
MS in Data Science (Columbia University)
Passed CFA Level II
BS in Industrial Engineering (Pontifical Catholic University of Chile)

Keth Ditthavong

Keth Ditthavong concentrates his practice in patent preparation and prosecution as well as patent counseling. He has drafted hundreds of patent applications for domestic and foreign companies. Mr. Ditthavong has spoken on numerous panels on patent law and practice. He was formerly with the firms of Oblon, Spivak, McClelland, Maier & Neustadt, P.C., and McDermott, Will & Emery.

Mr. Ditthavong worked as a Senior Systems Engineer in the area of voice and data communications with the Bell Atlantic Corporation (now Verizon), and as a Senior Member of Technical Staff with the MITRE Corporation.

Bijan Afsari

Work

Sauma Capital

Caspian Capital Management

John Hopkins University

Education

Ph.D in Applied Mathematics (University of Maryland)

MS in Electrical Engineering (University of Maryland)

BSc in Electrical Engineering (Sharif University)

He was with the Computer Vision and Machine Learning lab at the Center for Image Processing at the Johns Hopkins University as a postdoc and later a research scientist (2011-2016), developing machine learning algorithms for high-dimensional time-series data (such as video) using non-linear and non-Euclidean geometries (e.g., Riemannian geometry).

Paul J. Bailo

Paul Bailo is widely recognized by industry thought leaders for his C-level executive skills in Digital Transformation, Business Development and Growth Strategy. He has earned deep career success in multiple fields, along with an outstanding industry reputation and important executive roles as Digital Innovator, Strategic Thinker, Change Agent, Customer Champion, Industry Author and Creative Entrepreneur. He has built and led top performing teams, start-up entities and world-class organizations. His background in digital transformation, digital communications, emerging payments, operational excellence, data-driven decision-making and ongoing product innovation is unparalleled. His blue-chip background encompasses Google, Apple, AT&T, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, MasterCard, American Express, GE, Citibank, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, NYC Transit Authority and US Department of Transportation.

Paul has held senior executive positions in digital marketing, managerial analytics, mobile payments, SEO/SEM, customer insights and emerging payments with innovative Fortune 500 market leaders. His strong business expertise and technology capacity encompass start-up operations, general management, business growth and branding strategies. Paul has consistently exceeded mission-critical performance metrics, organizational goals and business targets, despite highly competitive and rapidly changing market dynamics.

Paul is currently the CEO of PIPCG and Chief Transformation Officer – OZ Digital Consulting, and former Global Head for Digital Strategy & Innovation for Infosys Digital where he focuses on creating and executing new business strategies, innovative solutions and rolling out unique digital platforms. As “Go-To Resource” for internal executives, he spearheads digital innovation, designing new processes and handling large-scale project portfolios. He continues to interact with Fortune 500 clients, such as Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, AT&T, SunTrust, Apple, Google and many other industry leaders.

Previously, Paul consulted with MasterCard as Vice President – Global Digital Innovation & Emerging Payments, tasked with driving aggressive sales, product innovation, target marketing and partnership growth. His present position continues to give him the chance to provide B2B clients with actionable business intelligence, optimize interactive online experiences and set up comprehensive platforms that dramatically enhance market position, profitability, and productivity.

Earlier, Paul held top leadership positions in managing customer insights, data analysis, digital technology, web operations and e-business solutions. He built and directed multi-functional teams through product launches, process improvements, sales supp

Paul holds a PhD in International Leadership & Innovation through the International School of Management. Earlier he completed degrees in diverse topics: MBA in Marketing and Technology at Wagner College, MS in Clinical Social Work (Human Behavior) at Fordham University and BS in Finance & Technology at St. John’s University.

Steve Bradford

Steve Bradford has been designing, implementing, and maintaining infrastructure for more than two decades, most recently with companies that leverage AWS or other cloud computing providers to deliver scalable, performant, and reliable applications. Steve is an AWS Certified Solutions Architect and specializes in building automation for infrastructure provisioning, monitoring, along with deployment pipelines that get products from developers to users quickly and safely.

Lam Trach Duong

Work

QSquared Capital

Education

MS in Financial Engineering (Columbia University, 2022)

Bachelors in Mathematics and Finance (Pennsylvania State University, 2021)

Suraj Keshri

Suraj Keshri is a seasoned Senior Software Engineer at HappyFunCorp, specializing in frontend, mobile, backend, and DevOps technologies. With a comprehensive grasp of the latest industry tools and frameworks, he consistently delivers sophisticated software solutions.

In addition to his professional endeavors, Suraj holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research and an M.S. in Financial Mathematics from Columbia University. His academic achievements include publishing several papers in Sports Analytics and Computational Neuroscience. Suraj also actively contributes as a peer reviewer for the Journal of Quantitative Analysis of Sports.

Within the mobile domain, Suraj has honed his skills working extensively with React Native, successfully delivering high-performance and scalable mobile applications. On the backend, his expertise centers on GraphQL microservices, Apollo Federation, RabbitMQ, Redis, and Postgres, accompanied by a keen understanding of evolving microservices architecture trends.

In the sphere of DevOps, Suraj’s proficiency extends to Kubernetes, Istio, Tekton, and Cloud Native technologies, enabling him to optimize application delivery and deployment processes. With a solid foundation in Typescript and Golang, he excels in intricate problem-solving and seamlessly collaborates with cross-functional teams.

Whether spearheading innovative greenfield projects or enhancing existing applications, Suraj’s unwavering dedication to delivering impeccable code consistently exceeds user expectations. His blend of technical acumen and academic prowess underscores his role as an esteemed software engineer in the industry.

Rachata Kongcheep

Work

Bank of Thailand

Meinhardt Group

Education

MS in Operations Research (Columbia University)

BS in Mechanical Engineering (Chulalongkorn University)

Ryan Holmes

Work

40|86 Advisors

Education

MS in Financial Engineering (Columbia University)

BS in Finance and Financial Management Services, Mathematics (Butler University)

Tony Cheung

Work

Sauma Capital

Safar Partners

Flexstone Partners

Caspian Private Equity

Caspian Capital Management

Education

BS in Information Technology with a Concentration in Finance (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

Sikun Xu

Work

Sauma Capital

Capstone Investment Advisors

The Data Science Institute at Columbia University

Cardinal Operations (Beijing) Co., Ltd

Dell

Education

Candidate PhD in Business Administration, Management and Operations (Washington University)

MS in Operations Research (Columbia University)

BS in Industrial Engineering (Shanghai Jiao Tong University)

Federico Klinkert

Work

Flexstone Partners

Manhattan Venture Partners

Golberg Lab (Columbia University)

Education

MS in Financial Engineering (Columbia University)

BS in Financial engineering (Columbia University)

BS in Mathematics with double major in Economics (Fordham University)

Rui Ding

Work

AlphaCrest Capital Management

Sauma Capital

Education

PhD Candidate in Applied Mathematics (Stony Brook University)

MSc in Financial Engineering and Applied Mathematics (Columbia University)

BSc in Applied and Computational Mathematics (Columbia University)

Dr. Agostino Capponi

Dr. Agostino Capponi is an Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at Columbia University, member of the Data Science Institute, the Center for the Management of Systemic risk, and the FDT Center for Intelligent Asset Management. He serves as an External Consultant at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Office of the Chief Economist. Agostino maintains collaborations with the Department of Treasury’s Office of Financial Research, the Commission of Future Trading and Commodities, and the Federal Reserve Board. Agostino’s research has been funded by major public agencies and private corporations, including the NSF, DARPA, U.S. Department of Energy, J.P. Morgan, IBM, the Institute for New Economic Thinking, the Global Risk Institute, the Clearpool Group, and the OCP Group.

Agostino is an Editor of Management Science in the Finance Department. He is also a co-editor of Mathematics and Financial Economics, and the financial engineering area editor of Operations Research Letters and of the Institute of Industrial Engineering Transactions. Agostino currently serves as an associate editor of Operations Research, Finance and Stochastics, SIAM Journal on Financial Mathematics, Applied Mathematical Finance, Frontiers of Mathematical Finance, Stochastic Systems, Stochastic Models, and the American Institute of Mathematical Sciences Journal of Dynamics & Games.

He serves as the Chair of the SIAM Activity group in Financial Mathematics and Engineering, and as the President of the INFORMS Finance Section.
Agostino received his Master and Ph.D. Degree in Computer Science and Applied and Computational Mathematics from the California Institute of Technology.

Dave Baggett

Dave Baggett is the Founder and CEO of INKY. INKY’s flagship product, INKY Phish Fence, uses computer vision and other machine learning techniques to identify and block phishing emails. Phishing is arguably the biggest problem in cybersecurity today, driving over $1.5B/year of theft and extensive PII and credential theft.

Prior to INKY, Dave was co-founder and COO of travel search provider ITA Software, where he oversaw software development, operations, and customer relations, expanding the company to over 500 employees. Google acquired ITA for $700M in April 2011.

Dave has a B.S./B.A. in Computer Science and Linguistics from the University of Maryland, College Park and a S.M. in Computer Science from MIT. Dave also volunteers as a member of the US Department of Energy Secretary Advisory Board on AI.

Dr. Dilip Madan

Dr. Dilip Madan is Professor of Finance at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. He specializes in Mathematical Finance. Currently he serves as a consultant to Morgan Stanley and Meru Capital. He has also consulted with Citigroup, Bloomberg, the FDIC and Wachovia Securities. He is a founding member and Past President of the Bachelier Finance Society. He received the 2006 von Humboldt award in applied mathematics, was the 2007 Risk Magazine Quant of the year, received the 2008 Medal for Science from the University of Bologna and held the 2010 Eurandom Chair. He is Man- aging Editor of Mathematical Finance, Co-editor of the Review of Derivatives Research, Associate Editor of the Journal of Credit Risk and Quantitative Finance. His work is dedicated to improving the quality of financial valuation models, enhancing the performance of investment strategies, and advancing the efficiency of risk allocation in modern economies. Recent major contributions have appeared in Mathematical Finance, Finance and Stochastics, Quantitative Finance, the Journal of Computational Finance, The International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance, The Journal of Risk, The Journal of Credit Risk among other journals.

Gaurav Bhandari

Gaurav Bhandari is the Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of Long Arc Capital. Prior to starting Long Arc, Gaurav was a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs where he led the private investment portfolio for Goldman Sachs Investment Partners, a multi-strategy global investment fund within Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Gaurav joined Goldman Sachs in 1990 and worked first as a quantitative strategist, then an investment banker and for the last 12 years of his career at Goldman Sachs, as a proprietary investor and portfolio manager.

Gaurav currently serves on the Boards of Agile Frameworks, a provider of a cloud-based, SaaS software solution for engineering services firms; CircleBlack, an enterprise software business for financial advisors; Renaissance Alliance, an insurance distribution platform for independent agents; Robertson Stephens, a wealth management business; Skaleet, a SaaS provider of a next-gen core banking system serving retail banks globally; and Tinubu Square, an enterprise software business for specialty lines insurance (all LAC portfolio companies). He has previously served on the Boards of several companies, including Networked Insights, an advertising technology company; Media Rights Capital, an independent film and television studio; iCrossing, an advertising technology company; Leaf Group, an internet media business; Indostar, a Non-Banking Financial Company; James River Group Holdings, a specialty insurance and reinsurance business and Leor Energy, an oil and gas business.

Gaurav has a B.S. in Computer Science from Columbia University.

Dr. Ali Hirsa, Chief Scientific Officer

Concurrent to Ask2.ai, Dr. Hirsa is a professor, director of financial engineering program at Columbia University, director of center for AI in business analytics and FinTech, and also Managing Partner at Sauma Capital, LLC. He teaches deep learning and AI applications in financial engineering and operations research and Monte Carlo simulation methods. His research areas are machine learning, deep learning, data mining, algorithmic trading, optimization, computational and quantitative finance. His focus has been on machine learning applications in finance specifically in asset and wealth management and also developing learning algorithms on signal extraction from data.

Previously he was a Managing Director and Global Head of Quantitative Strategy at DV Trading, LLC, a Partner and Head of Analytical Trading Strategy at Caspian Capital Management (CCM). Prior to joining CCM, he worked in a variety of quantitative positions at Morgan Stanley, Banc of America Securities, and Prudential Securities. He was also a Fellow at Courant Institute of New York University in the Mathematics of Finance Program from 2004 to 2014.

He is author of “Computational Methods in Finance”, Chapman & Hall`/CRC 2012 and co-author of “An Introduction to Mathematics of Financial Derivatives”, third edition, Academic Press and is the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Investment Strategies. He has several publications and is a frequent speaker at academic and practitioner conferences. He is co-inventor of “Methods for Post Trade Allocation” (US Patent 8,799,146). He is currently a member of Board of Visitors of College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences at University of Maryland College Park since June 2016 and was on Board of Visitors at A. James Clark School of Engineering from 2008 to 2018 and served as a trustee on University of Maryland College Park Foundation from 2011 to 2016.

Ali received his PhD in Applied Mathematics from University of Maryland at College Park under the supervision of Professors Howard C. Elman and Dilip B. Madan.

Satyan Malhotra
Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Ali Hirsa
Chief Scientific Officer

Dr. Dilip Madan
Advisor

Dr. Agostino Capponi
Advisor

Dave Baggett
Advisor

Gaurav Bhandari
Advisor

Steve Bradford
Advisor

Paul J. Bailo
Advisor

Keth Ditthavong
Advisor

Dr. Suraj Keshri
Research

Dr. Bijan Afsari
Research

Federico Klinkert
Research

Miao Wang
Research

Sikun (Samuel) Xu
Research

Tony Cheung
Research

Ryan Holmes
Research

Noah Dawang
Research

Ivan Correa
Research

Lennart John Baals
Research

Yiting Liu
Research

Lennart John Baals

Yiting Liu

Ivan Correa

Keth Ditthavong

Satyan Malhotra Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Ali Hirsa Chief Scientific Officer

Dr. Dilip Madan Advisor

Dr. Agostino Capponi Advisor

Dave Baggett Advisor

Gaurav Bhandari Advisor

Steve Bradford Advisor

Paul J. Bailo Advisor

Keth Ditthavong Advisor

Dr. Suraj Keshri Research

Dr. Bijan Afsari Research

Federico Klinkert Research

Miao Wang Research

Sikun (Samuel) Xu Research

Tony Cheung Research

Ryan Holmes Research

Noah Dawang Research

Ivan Correa Research

Lennart John Baals Research

Yiting Liu Research

Satyan Malhotra
Chief Executive Officer

Dr. Ali Hirsa
Chief Scientific Officer

Dr. Dilip Madan
Advisor

Dr. Agostino Capponi
Advisor

Dave Baggett
Advisor

Gaurav Bhandari
Advisor

Steve Bradford
Advisor

Paul J. Bailo
Advisor

Keth Ditthavong
Advisor

Dr. Suraj Keshri
Research

Dr. Bijan Afsari
Research

Federico Klinkert
Research

Miao Wang
Research

Sikun (Samuel) Xu
Research

Tony Cheung
Research

Ryan Holmes
Research

Noah Dawang
Research

Ivan Correa
Research

Lennart John Baals
Research

Yiting Liu
Research