BATTLE OF THE QUANTS

Keynote Speaker: Ron Insana Dr. Ron Insana is the President and CEO of Insana Capital Partners. The Firm is an SEC registered investment adviser with assets under management in excess of $100 million. Mr. Insana brings more than two decades of financial market experience as an award-winning journalist covering global economics, financial markets, political policy and the alternative investment industry. Mr. Insana currently serves as a regular contributor on CNBC, the world's leading business and financial news network, giving color to major market and political events. Prior to founding the Firm, Mr. Insana was the anchor of CNBC's Street Signs, wrote monthly columns for a major U.S. newspaper and hosted a nationally syndicated radio program. Mr. Insana joined CNBC in 1991 as a regular contributor to various television and radio programs produced by CNBC and its affiliates. Before moving to CNBC, Mr. Insana worked as Managing Editor and Senior Anchor for the Financial News Network, where he began his career in 1984 as a production assistant. Mr. Insana has written three books about Wall Street. He graduated with honors from California State University at Northridge.

Roger G. Ibbotson Roger G. Ibbotson is a Professor at Yale School of Management. He is Chairman of Zebra Capital Management, a quantitative equity hedge fund manager. In addition, he is Founder and Advisor to Ibbotson Associates, now a Morningstar Company. He has written numerous books and articles including Stocks Bonds Bills and Inflation (updated annually) which serves as a standard reference for information and capital market returns. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago where he also taught for many years.

Christopher K. Cornish The Wall Street career of Chris Cornish, CIO of Cedar Creek Asset Management, LLC, spans three decades. He has been a trader and money manager with major international firms in New York, London and Geneva. His involvement with quantitative techniques began in the late eighties when he attended executive management courses in Modern Portfolio Theory conducted by Professor William F. Sharpe at a joint Stamford University/IMI program in Geneva and in London conducted by Professor Elroy Dimson at the London Business School. His involvement with hedge funds began in the early nineties when he put together his development team. Since then, they have worked with several highly respected firms and industry figures and are about to launch a hedge fund of their own.

Andrew Weisman Andrew Weisman is Managing Director and Chief Investment Officer for the Merrill Lynch Hedge Fund Development and Management Group at Merrill Lynch. Mr. Weisman was a founding member and Director of Research and Risk Management for Strativarius Capital Management LLC, a New York based Global/Macro hedge fund. Until April 30, 2002, Mr.. Weisman was the Chief Investment Officer and member of the board of directors for The Nikko Securities Co. International, Inc. (Nikko). Professional achievements include the development of several risk management products: analytical tools and trading methodologies used by Nikko and other money management firms. Mr. Weisman published an extensive collection of articles on asset allocation and risk issues related to hedge funds. Research awards include: the Fourth Annual Bernstein Fabozzi/Jacobs Levy Award for Outstanding Article published in The Journal of Portfolio Management during the volume year 2001-2002; and the GAIM Research Paper of the Year, 2003. He is currently a member of the editorial avisory board of the Journal of Portfolio Management. Previous professional experience includes his position as head of Bankers Trust's Automated Currency Trading Unit and senior asset manager for Commodities Corporation LLC (Goldman Sachs Princeton LLC). Mr. Weisman has a BA from Columbia College (1982), a Masters in International Affairs specializing in International Business from the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs (1983), completed all course work and comprehensive exams towards a PhD in Money and Financial Markets at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business.

Photios Harmantzis, PhD Dr. Photios Harmantzis is a member of the Investment Management Research team at FX Concepts, one of the world's leading private currency manager. He is responsible for research and development of systematic trading models for the firm's multi-asset portfolios. Besides global macro and CTA, his prior hedge fund experience is in Long/Short (Market Neutral) U.S. equities (fundamentals-driven) and Long/Short U.S. credit (capital structure arbitrage), all quantitative (models-driven). Dr. Harmantzis has extensive research experience in specific areas of finance, operations research and technology management. His works have been published in several academic journals, he is a frequent speaker to conferences and he maintains strong ties with academia. His degrees include a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto, a Finance MBA from the Rotman School (U. Toronto) & Stern (NYU), and a Master's in Operations Research from the University of Pennsylvania.

Ken Akoundi, Director, Co-Head of Risk Management Prior to joining Optima, Dr. Akoundi was a founding member of the RiskMetrics Group, where he last held the position of Chief Knowledge Officer. Prior to RiskMetrics Group, Dr. Akoundi was a Project Manager in the Risk Management Services department at J.P. Morgan, where he managed software development, and maintenance, and training. He has also lectured on various risk management topics at NYU, Columbia, Baruch College, and Polytechnic University. Dr. Akoundi holds a Doctorate in Civil Engineering from Polytechnic University in New York.

Dr. Raphael Douady, Founder & Head of Research, Riskdata S.A. Raphael Douady is one of the founders of Riskdata, the market-leading provider of risk management tools for investors, asset managers, hedge funds and funds of funds. With more than ten years experience in the banking industry (risk management, option models, trading strategies) and twenty years research in pure and applied mathematics, Dr Douady is renowned for his highly sophisticated quantitative solutions and statistical analysis. He created and organizes the New York University seminar of Mathematical Finance.

David Obert David Obert is the Chief Investment Officer of Systeia Capital Management, the Paris-based $1 bln AUM alternative investment firm he co-founded in 2000. Before Systeia, David was the Managing Director of Barep Asset Management, the €6 bln alternative investment firm that he co-founded in 1989, and he holds an ENSAM engineering degree (Diplôme d'ingénieur de l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Arts et Métiers). Systeia, which is a part of the Credit Agricole Group and employs 45 professionals, has four single manager programs and has been devoted to offering competitive returns in primarily quantitative strategies since its launch.

Henrik J. Neuhaus Henrik Neuhaus is Partner, Co-CIO, and Director of Quantitative Research at Triumvirate Capital Management. He is a founding partner and responsible for quantitative methodology development and implementation; co-chief investment officer. He is a regular speaker and panelist at financial industry events including American Stock Exchange colloquia, IRR, Risk, Risk Invest, and CBOE/CBOT/CME conferences, and PRMIA conferences and round-tables.

Denise K. Shull, M.A. Denise K. Shull, M.A. is a leading thinker in advanced trading psychology. First speaking publicly in 2006, Ms. Shull has received over 40 invitations to discuss her unique synthesis of neuroscience, theoretical thinking about mental consciousness and the human reaction to the challenges of ever-fluctuating volatility and liquidity. A member of CME Group and a short-term trader since 1994, Ms. Shull is also President of Trader Psyches Inc., the consulting firm she founded to teach successful traders a systematic approach to their asset of Psychological Capital™ - the reciprocal relationship between reason, analysis, emotion, intuition and trading results. "At any point in time when a discretionary decision must be made, it is critical to deal directly with all of the dimensions involved in human risk-reward analysis." Ms. Shull has completed advanced graduate work at The Mid-Manhattan Institute and holds a Master's degree in the neuroscience of the human unconscious from The University of Chicago.

Albert A. Slawsky, CFA Since September of 1995, Albert Slawsky has served as Senior Vice President - Risk Management for M. D. Sass Investors Services, Inc. Since July of 1996, he has also co-managed the M. D. Sass Multi-Strategy Fund, L.P., a multi-manager multi-strategy fund of hedge funds. From 1982 until November 1987, Mr. Slawsky was a Vice President and Portfolio Manager with M. D. Sass Investors Services, Inc. where he managed $200 million of limited risk equity option portfolios for major corporate investors and $500 million of mortgage backed securities for a variety of employee benefit plans. In November of 1987, Mr. Slawsky established MTH Asset Management, the Registered Investment Advisor affiliate of Miller Tabak Hirsch + Co., a New York Stock Exchange Member firm. MTH Asset Management managed portfolios for large institutional clients to exploit mispricings between derivative instruments and the underlying cash market securities and Mr. Slawsky was its Chief Investment Officer until he returned to the MDSass organization in 1995. In 1992, Mr. Slawsky and Dr. Robert Nathans, head of the Institute for Pattern Recognition at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, formed SAJE Asset Management, Inc. to apply proprietary statistical techniques to create security selection, portfolio construction and risk control models. SAJE Asset Management used these models to manage market neutral equity portfolio. Mr. Slawsky earned his B.S. in Physics at the University of Michigan and his J.D. at Rutgers University. He holds the designation of Chartered Financial Analyst.

Agustin Leon Agustin Leon is a Director and Risk Manager of Ramius HVB Partners, LLC. Mr. Leon joined the Firm in June 2005. From 2001 to 2005, Mr. Leon was the Senior Quantitative Analyst at Ivy Asset Management, a unit of Bank of New York. He was also a Quantitative Analyst at Instinet Corp., an electronic trading network, and a Quant / Trader at Rotella Capital Management, a Commodity Trading Advisor. Prior to entering the investments business, Mr. Leon was a management consultant at Arthur D. Little. Mr. Leon graduated with B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994 and 1995 respectively. In addition, Mr. Leon is a CFA charterholder and a member of the Society of Quantitative Analysts.

Karsten Schroeder Karsten Schroeder is the CEO of Amplitude Capital and the portfolio manager for the Amplitude Dynamic Trading Fund. He oversees all the key decisions related to product development, trading ideas and strategy for the Amplitude’s range of funds. Together with his partners he founded Amplitude Capital in September 2004. Prior to that he was with McKinsey where he was involved in a number of key Corporate Finance projects involving blue chip European clients. Karsten received his Business Diploma from the HHL in Germany. Growing up in former Eastern Germany, he also lived in the US and Australia. Karsten started trading Futures and Options at a young age and eventually turned his passion into his profession. He regularly speaks at conferences and appears as a frequent guest on business channels, such as Bloomberg and CNBC.

Robert Sherak Robert Sherak is The Midway Group co-founder, portfolio manager and CEO. Bob is jointly responsible for investment and trading decisions, risk management and quantitative analysis. Since 1976, Bob served at Chase Bank, Salomon Brothers, Bell Laboratories, DLJ, and CDC/IXIS in a variety of roles including portfolio manager, trader, fixed income research analyst, and programmer. He has over 20 years of hands-on experience with mortgage backed securities. Mr. Sherak holds a B.A. from the University of the Pacific, attended the Cognitive Science program at the University of Chicago, and holds an M. A. in Experimental Psychology from New York University.

Shane I. Burn Shane I. Burn is the Chief Investment Officer of Insana Capital Partners, an SEC registered investment advisor with over $100MM in assets under management. Prior to Insana, he was a Senior Analyst at ACAM Advisors where he was responsible for sourcing, selecting and conducting qualitative and quantitative analytical reviews of hedge fund managers. Prior experience includes: Double Alpha Group where he was a senior trader and assistant portfolio manager in Statistical Arbitrage; J.P. Morgan Securities where he was a Vice President in Equity Derivatives and structured OTC derivatives and developed and marketed special situations and volatility trade ideas; and Niederhoffer Investments, where he traded currencies, futures and options for the funds as a proprietary trader. Mr. Burn began his career in 1988 at Sanford Bernstein as a Portfolio Management Administrator for high net worth equity and bond portfolios. Mr. Burn has an M.B.A. in Finance from the Stern School of Business at New York University, where he was a Leonard N. Stern Scholar, and an undergraduate degree in Economics from Johns Hopkins University.

Adam Burczyk Adam Burczyk is CEO and Founder of Actuarials Holdings, LLC. Mr. Burczyk started his derivatives career in 1993 as Chief Technical Writer for the capital markets group of a major Chicago bank, and since has been at the forefront of market innovation by inventing new and revolutionary financial instruments. He consults to top asset managers, hedge funds, insurance companies, and other financial institutions about “best practices” in derivatives trading. Mr. Burczyk obtained his Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

Sean Effinger-Dean Sean Effinger-Dean is the head of Quantitative Analysis at Actuarials Holdings and is also a risk manager for Spica Fund. He helps to develop and implement new pricing tools, and also researches new quantitative ideas for the company. He graduated in 2006 from Princeton University with a B.A. in Mathematics.


Neal Greenberg Neal is the Co-Founder of Agile Group and is an SEC registered investment adviser. He is also the Chief Investment Officer and Chief Executive Officer of Agile's underlying hedge funds and hedge funds of funds. Neal is responsible for due diligence and strategic allocation of the funds' investments. In the early 1980s, Neal worked in mergers and acquisitions in the oil and gas industry with Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette, as well as with Butcher Singer. In 1986, Neal founded Greenberg & Associates (known today as Agile Group), a wealth management firm specializing in complex tax structures, estate planning, portfolio construction, and asset management. Neal is a Chartered Financial Consultant (ChFC) and holds numerous securities licenses, including the Series 3, Series 4, Series 7, Series 24, Series 63, and Series 65.

John DeTore Mr. John A. DeTore is the Chief Investment Officer of GRT United Alpha. Mr. DeTore has been involved with research and management since 1983. He formed United Alpha and started the European Fund in 2003. His firm joined forces with GRT Capital Partners in 2006. Mr. DeTore’s reputation as a leader in quantitative research and a premiere product engineer are well established. His success began at Wellington where he conceived and built the quantitative research effort over eight years into a unit that produced a 1000 basis point spread per year in the buy versus sell recommendations. Mr. DeTore created and managed two new successful products for Wellington before being lured to Putnam in 1994. Putnam challenged Mr. DeTore with building the industry’s best quantitative research effort and product engineering unit. The unit, during his tenure, designed seven products focusing on international and small cap areas. These funds grew to $10 billion in assets, and were among the best performing products in the firm. Eventually this unit grew to 30 people and helped shape one of money management’s great performance and asset growth records. Mr. DeTore was a key figure in process design, risk control, investment strategy, personnel development and strategic management. In particular, he helped realign the $70 billion smaller cap line-up and helped structure an initiative into international equities that became among the industry’s most successful. Mr. DeTore holds a Master’s degree in transportation from MIT where he also has his undergraduate degree. He has a long standing role as a high profile participant in various industry research and investment organizations such as the Boston Securities Analysts Society and CFAI.

Stuart Q. Flerlage Mr. Flerlage is a Principal at NuWave. NuWave's Pattern recognition system has delivered among the most consistent returns over the past 6 years. Prior to joining NuWave Mr. Flerlage was the CIO of Brownstone Advisors a NY based Fund of Funds. Mr. Flerlage's Career began at Bear Stearns where he was part of the Risk Management team that oversaw all of the hedge fund clients whom cleared through Bear Stearns. After 5 years at Bear Stearns, Mr. Flerlage accepted the position of Head of Treasury Risk Management for the North American office of Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi - at the time, Japan's largest bank and the 2nd largest bank globally in terms of assets.

Giovanni Beliossi Giovanni is Managing Partner at FGS Capital LLP, where he is the CEO and is responsible for portfolio management. Previously he was Associate Director of hedge funds at First Quadrant Ltd, where he set up and was the portfolio manager of its Pan European long/short equity market neutral portfolios, and was responsible for UK-based hedge fund business. He has extensive experience of managing equity market neutral portfolios since 1995, when he joined the firm. Prior to that he was a tenured Research Fellow with the Economics Department of the University of Bologna in Italy, and he has held appointments with BARRA International and Eastern Group Plc. He co-founded the Real Options Group to look at research and applications of Real Options to corporate finance and investments. He is an active member of AIMA (Alternative Investment Management Association) and a Research Committee member of Inquire UK. He is a Board member of the International Association of Financial Engineers (IAFE). He is the European Chair of the Steering Group of the Investor Risk Committee (IRC) of IAFE working on guidelines for disclosure and transparency for hedge funds. Giovanni is a CFA Charterholder.

David Bint David Bint joined Henderson Global Investors in 2003 as Director of Global Sector/Theme Research and in 2005 launched the Henderson European Style Rotational Long/Short Fund with Steve Danby. David started his career as Market Strategist and Quant Analyst Credit Lyonnais before moving some years later to JP Morgan as Head of Quant Analysis. He graduated from the London School of Economics with a BSc in Economics, as also has a Dip BA from Manchester Business School.

Keith M. Danko Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer ACAM Advisors LLC Keith Danko joined ACAM in March 2003. Prior to becoming CEO and CIO of ACAM, Mr. Danko served as Managing Director of Weston Capital, where he managed hedge fund research, asset allocation and chaired the Investment Committee. Mr. Danko began his career in 1981 in corporate finance at Kidder Peabody. After receiving his MBA from Harvard Business School in 1985, he joined Goldman Sachs for seven years, serving in New York and London as Executive Director in charge of international mortgage and asset-backed trading, and managing Goldman's CMO arbitrage and mortgage new issues desk. A pioneer in the development of global asset-backed securities, he structured and managed the first U.K. multi-tranche CMO, as well as the first U.K. automobile securitization. In 1992 he established Minnisink Capital to manage private capital concentrating in global fixed-income and equities, and he founded Witherspoon Investment Management, a registered investment advisor, which managed equity portfolios and provided consulting services to hedge funds and allocation advice to investors. As the cofounder of Tachyon Systems, he also created the first real-time analytics for the NASDAQ stock market. A graduate of The Lawrenceville School, Mr. Danko earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with an economics major from Duke University and earned an MBA from Harvard University.

Moderator: Christopher Holt Chris is a writer, speaker and consultant on the topic of hedge funds and alternative investments. He is also the founding editor of AllAboutAlpha.com, a website dedicated to institutional investing issues such as portable alpha, alternative beta, 130/30, and hedge fund industry trends. He publishes a daily blog on recent academic research, media coverage, industry developments, interviews and reports from key industry events and has been quoted by the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Institutional Investor, Pensions & Investments, Reuters and Bloomberg. Prior to launching AllAboutAlpha.com, Chris was Director of Business Development at hedge fund manager JC Clark Ltd. and spent a 10 year tour of duty in the management consulting industry with several firms including Ernst & Young. During this time, he also consulted to several international organizations including the World Bank and World Economic Forum. He holds an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and a Bachelor of Commerce degree from Canada’s Queen’s University. He also holds the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) designation.

John Zumbrunn John Zumbrunn has over 30 years of investment experience. Currently, he is the Managing Director and owner of Princeton Investment Technologies, an investment advisory and consulting firm. Mr. Zumbrunn has previous trading and quantitative research experience with Chemical Bank, Investment Index Technologies (a subsidiary Prudential Insurance), Salomon Brothers, and the Commodities Corporation. He has served as a financial and trading consultant to Willowbridge Associates, Inc., Union Spring Asset Management, Inc., and other hedge fund clients. Mr. Zumbrunn’s career as a trader, operating officer, innovator and academic has provided him a broad perspective of the financial markets. Highlights include specialized trading in stock index arbitrage, mutual fund switching, takeover/tender strategies, dividend capture programs and co-invention the Intech Technology, a stock index plus program. Mr. Zumbrunn holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley and an A.B. in Mathematics from Princeton University. He has also taught mathematics at Columbia University and the City University of New York.

Alan Slomowitz Alan Slomowitz, Director of Algorithmic and Trading Product Development Alan has been with Dow Jones Newswires for over 15 years, working in editorial, technology and product development. He leads a team that works closely with both sides of the Street to build the latest-generation news products for algorithmic and trading professionals. His current product focus is building specialized news offerings that can be directly plugged into algorithmic and quantitative trading systems. In addition to his distinguished career in financial information services, Alan earned a Ph.D. at the Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies at Adelphi University.

John Morar John Morar, PhD, has worked at IBM Watson Research, NY since 1982. During that time he's had extensive experience in a broad range of disciplines from semiconductor materials, computer virus research and Services Oriented Architectures to infrastructures that support advanced economic systems. He has written 70 articles in reviewed scientific journals and holds patents in the areas of device processing, computer virus detection, Web services, and economic systems. Dr. Morar currently manages a research group focusing on the application of stream processing in next generation platforms for Financial Services.