Name: Eduardo Candela Garza
Department: Civil and Environmental Engineering
Title of Research: Safety Algorithms for Autonomous Vehicles using Artificial Intelligence
Email: e.candela-garza19@imperial.ac.uk
Personal Web Page address: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eduardo-candela-garza/
Supervisor(s): Dr Panagiotis Angeloudis, Prof Yiannis Demiris

About me: I am originally from Mexico City, where I simultaneously completed my two undergraduate degrees in Mechatronics Engineering and Industrial Engineering at Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM), graduating first in my class for both degrees. Afterward, I moved to the United States to get my master’s degree in Operations Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). At MIT I also worked as a Research Assistant, focusing on developing new machine learning and mathematical optimisation techniques for forecasting and resource allocation. Furthermore, a research collaboration led me to join Harvard University as a part-time Research Assistant for an additional year. 

After graduating, I moved to Silicon Valley in California to work as a Programme Manager at Tesla to lead several projects that involved developing and implementing tools for the optimisation of logistics when Model 3 was launched. Later on, I was a Data Scientist at the Bosch Centre for Artificial Intelligence, where I focused on applying AI to the BMW and Mercedes-Benz next generation ultrasonic sensors, in order to improve object detection and autonomous driving.

Summary of Research: I am a member of the Transport Systems and Logistics Laboratory, and also the Personal Robotics

Laboratory. My research aims to develop safety algorithms for Autonomous Vehicle Control Systems, which are essential for having reliable and safe autonomous vehicles on the roads.

In particular, I focus on the decision-making aspect of autonomous vehicles, which consists in the set of algorithms that control the actions (decisions) of a vehicle – such as lane changing or braking. Decision-making requires state-of-the-art learning methods, making artificial intelligence an indispensable tool for training autonomous vehicles. In order to achieve safety requirements, they must be trained with extremely rare and complex scenarios called “edge-cases”, usually using computer simulators.

Given that safety requirements for autonomous vehicles have not been achieved yet, the main goal of my work is to develop methods that can automate and optimise the generation of “edge-cases”, so that the decision-making training process in autonomous vehicles can be more efficient, therefore the required safety levels can be reached faster.

Research interests:

• Autonomous Vehicles
• Artificial Intelligence
• Reinforcement Learning
• Machine Learning
• Mathematical modelling and optimisation
• Applied probability and statistics
• Operations Research

Why did you choose the scholarship scheme at Imperial College: During my years in industry I realised I wanted to return to research, particularly in the field of autonomous vehicles. I became very excited when I learned about a project at Imperial that involved self-driving, safety, artificial intelligence and optimisation – and that was a collaboration between the Transport and Robotics labs.

When I contacted my supervisor, Dr Panagiotis Angeloudis, and got to know him and his work, I immediately knew that I wanted to come Imperial. In fact, I did not even consider applying to other universities. He mentioned that the extremely competitive and prestigious President’s Scholarship was our only option for funding, because the other alternatives were only available to European students.

I am incredibly grateful for having been awarded with this unique opportunity at Imperial, as I am able to pursue my research with freedom at a world-class university. I hope the research my group and I do can make a meaningful impact in the world and save lives.

I have also been pleasantly surprised by the good friendships and connections I have made in the events the Graduate School has organised for us.

Name: Xiao Hu
Department:  Department of Mechanical Engineering
Title of Research: Attenuation of the unsteady loading on a high-rise building using feedback control
Email: x.hu19@imperial.ac.uk
Supervisor(s): Prof. Aimee Morgans & Prof. Jonathan Morrison

About me: I am a research postgraduate at the Department of Mechanical Engineering working in the area of fluid dynamics. Before moving to Imperial, I obtained BEng (with honors)  and MSc degree in Aerospace Engineering from Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), China. commenced studying on the stability of spinning flight vehicles.  I attended BIT Flight Dynamics Laboratory in my junior year and commenced the research about aerodynamics and flight dynamics. And my research project during my master stage focused on the enhancement to decay of wake-vortex shedding off the aircraft wings.

Summary of Research: My project focuses on the feedback control for reducing the unsteady pressure loading on the building. Due to the bluff shape of high-rise buildings, unsteady loading is always associated with 3D wake dynamics. Numerical computations in the form of Large Eddy Simulations (LES) are employed to characterize unforced 3D wakes around a high-rise building, with various oncoming wind directions considered. Actuation in the form of synthetic slot jets is then added to the edges of the building, and the unsteady loading response to actuation characterised. This will allow the design of feedback controllers for reducing the wake fluctuation and drag.

Research interests: Fluid Mechanics, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Flow Control, Modal Analysis

Why did you choose the scholarship scheme at Imperial College: Imperial college is a world class research institute  where I can not only continue my research in a deep-going way, but also be exposed to others who are at the forefront of their respective fields. As the most prestigious scholarship offered at Imperial College , the President’s PhD scholarship offered me the freedom to work on my own research without financial constraints. Being a recipient of this scholarship is a life-long honor for me.

Name: Leyang Liu
Department: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Title of Research: Multi-level hierarchical optimisation for a whole-water system model
Email: leyang.liu16@imperial.ac.uk
Personal Web Page address: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leyang-liu-6b8634117/
Supervisor(s): Dr. Ana Mijic

About me: I hold an MSc in Environmental Engineering (Pass with Distinction) from Imperial College London with Black & Veatch Prize, and a BEng in Hydraulic Engineering (Hons) from Tsinghua University, China. My research starts from investigating vertical water mixing in Pearl River Estuary based on the concept of water age in undergraduate study. Then I conducted systems modelling for integrated water management in my Master’s research.

Summary of Research: In current integrated water resources management, challenges still remain how to conceptualise and determine the optimal water systems structure with respect to centralised versus decentralised infrastructure within a socio-hydrological system, and its operation strategy considering simultaneously the short-term dynamics and a long-term planning, in an integrated fashion.

This study will firstly define a water catchment system through its urban, agricultural, ecological, natural and human components, and then build the cyclic loop between decision-making and feedback. A series of multi-scale applications of such model will be conducted. It is expected that the developed model will enable optimal decisions for water resources, asset management and decentralised storage planning, to satisfy the demand-supply balance, while minimising impact on the environment in an economically and socially-optimal way.

Research interests:

• Systems water modelling/Integrated water resources management
• Hydrology and water quality
• Socio-hydrology/Ecohydrology
• Multi-disciplinary modelling

Why did you choose the scholarship scheme at Imperial College: I was advised by Presidents’ scholarship by my supervisor and am quite impressed how prestigious this scholarship is. It is based on candidate’ academic excellence and research potential, and thus can fairly value candidates’ research ability and academic potential. It provides abundant funding for candidates to accomplish their research without worrying their budgets, which makes me concentrate on my research and is thus hugely appreciated by myself.

Name: May-Yin (Ashlyn) Low
Department: Chemical Engineering
Title of Research: Investigation of CO2 adsorbents for direct air capture: Equilibrium, kinetic and stability data
Email: m.low19@imperial.ac.uk
Personal Web Page address: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashlynlow/
Supervisor(s): Camille Petit

About me: I completed my undergraduate degree in Nanotechnology Engineering at the University of Waterloo in Canada. This was a 5-year co-operative program, which allowed me to obtain 2 full years of working experience at various institutions around the world before graduating. These experiences included placements at the Agency of Science, Technology, and Research (A*STAR) and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, the University of Cambridge in the UK, and IDEXX Laboratories in the US. At Imperial, in addition to pursuing my PhD, I am also the cohort representative for the 2019 President’s Scholars and a PhD student representative for the Chemical Engineering department. In my spare time, I enjoy rock climbing, hiking, cycling, playing badminton, and travelling!

Summary of Research: The goal of my PhD is to contribute to the advancement of direct air capture (DAC) for climate mitigation. According to the latest reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, negative emission technologies (NETs) are necessary to meet the 2015 Paris Agreement goal of limiting global temperature rise to below 2 °C. The use of solid adsorbents to remove CO2 directly from the atmosphere, i.e. DAC, is a NET actively being investigated.
   
   A first generation of pilot scale adsorption-based DAC units have already been commercialized. However, there is still a need for accurate performance, energy, and cost estimates for these processes. This requires the collection of critical data such as an adsorbent’s CO2 capacity in the relevant low-pressure range, mass transfer kinetics, selectivity towards other gases, and long-term stability. Today, much of this data is scarcely available.
   
   My research aims to address this knowledge gap by collecting such data, which is necessary to evaluate DAC adsorbents using process modelling, and eventually to assess their potential at scale. This will allow for improvements in the adsorbent design, which could then further reduce the cost and energy requirements and improve their competitiveness in comparison to other negative emission approaches or technologies.

Research interests: Adsorption, direct air capture, CO2 capture, porous materials

Why did you choose the scholarship scheme at Imperial College: After being fortunate enough to work and live in several different countries, I decided that the UK was where I wanted to pursue my PhD. As an international student, funding options are quite limited except for extremely competitive scholarships such as the President’s Scholarship at Imperial. I was lucky enough to be one of the few chosen for this award, and feel extremely grateful to be able to freely pursue my research interests under the guidance of an amazing supervisor at a world-renowned university.

Name: May-Yin (Ashlyn) Low

Department: Chemical Engineering

Title of Research: Investigation of CO2 adsorbents for direct air capture: Equilibrium, kinetic and stability data

Email: m.low19@imperial.ac.uk
Personal Web Page address:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashlynlow/
Supervisor(s): Professor Camille Petit

About me: I completed my undergraduate degree in Nanotechnology Engineering at the University of Waterloo in Canada. This was a 5-year co-operative program, which allowed me to obtain 2 full years of working experience at various institutions around the world before graduating. These experiences included placements at the Agency of Science, Technology, and Research (A*STAR) and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, the University of Cambridge in the UK, and IDEXX Laboratories in the US. At Imperial, in addition to pursuing my PhD, I am also the cohort representative for the 2019 President’s Scholars and a PhD student representative for the Chemical Engineering department. In my spare time, I enjoy rock climbing, hiking, cycling, playing badminton, and travelling!

Summary of Research: The goal of my PhD is to contribute to the advancement of direct air capture (DAC) for climate mitigation. According to the latest reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, negative emission technologies (NETs) are necessary to meet the 2015 Paris Agreement goal of limiting global temperature rise to below 2 °C. The use of solid adsorbents to remove CO2 directly from the atmosphere, i.e. DAC, is a NET actively being investigated.

A first generation of pilot scale adsorption-based DAC units have already been commercialized. However, there is still a need for accurate performance, energy, and cost estimates for these processes. This requires the collection of critical data such as an adsorbent’s CO2 capacity in the relevant low-pressure range, mass transfer kinetics, selectivity towards other gases, and long-term stability. Today, much of this data is scarcely available.

My research aims to address this knowledge gap by collecting such data, which is necessary to evaluate DAC adsorbents using process modelling, and eventually to assess their potential at scale. This will allow for improvements in the adsorbent design, which could then further reduce the cost and energy requirements and improve their competitiveness in comparison to other negative emission approaches or technologies.

Research interests: Adsorption, direct air capture, CO2 capture, porous materials

Why did you choose the scholarship scheme at Imperial College: After being fortunate enough to work and live in several different countries, I decided that the UK was where I wanted to pursue my PhD. As an international student, funding options are quite limited except for extremely competitive scholarships such as the President’s Scholarship at Imperial. I was lucky enough to be one of the few chosen for this award, and feel extremely grateful to be able to freely pursue my research interests under the guidance of an amazing supervisor at a world-renowned university.

Name: Taiyu Zhu
Department: Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Title of Research: Deep Learning in Diabetes Management
Email: taiyu.zhu17@imperial.ac.uk
Personal Web Page address: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/taiyu.zhu17
Supervisor(s): Dr Pantelis Georgiou, Dr Kezhi Li

About me: Taiyu Zhu is a PhD candidate in the Centre for Bio-Inspired Technology. He has graduated with a First-Class Honours BEng degree from the Australian National University in 2017 and a Distinction MSc degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Imperial College London in 2018. He received the Outstanding Achievement Award for his achievements in the MSc courses.

Summary of Research: Empowered by the boosting data and advances of smart sensors, many cutting-edge AI technologies have achieved unprecedented performance in the health and biomedical areas. Taiyu’s research focuses on artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare. He has been working on developing novel machine learning and deep learning algorithms to meet the challenges in diabetes management. His research aims to deliver frontier biomedical engineering applications and AI-powered tools to improve the health and well-being for people with chronic diseases and solve real-world healthcare problems.

Research interests: AI in Healthcare, Deep Learning, Machine Learning, Diabetes Technology

Why did you choose the scholarship scheme at Imperial College: The President’s PhD Scholarship is a prestigious award, which offers me the freedom to stay dedicated to my research and attend academic events that I’m interested in.

Name:  Allison Gaines
Department: Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Title of Research: Integrating health and greenhouse gas emission metrics for packaged foods to promote sustainable diets
Email: a.gaines20@imperial.ac.uk
Personal Web Page address:  https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/a.gaines20
Supervisor(s): Bruce Neal, Paul Elliott

About me:I received an MSc from University of Oxford in Global Health Science and Epidemiology. My undergraduate degree is a BSc from Cornell University’s College of Engineering majoring in Information Science, Systems and Technology. I also have 5 years of professional experience in healthcare technology and application management, product design and computer science.

Summary of Research: My research aims to develop a metric for assessing the health and sustainability (in terms of GHGe) of the packaged food supply. This definitely overlaps with the concept of identifying and targeting UPFs as a larger culprit than they are in much of existing research.

The specific goals include: (1) understanding the regulations defining food products package labelling for ingredients and ingredient origin data; (2) developing methods that will enable the estimation of product level indicators of environmental impact, with a focus on CO2 emissions; (3) exploring options for labelling packaged foods with visual indicators that provide consumers with the capacity to make purchasing decisions that are beneficial for both human nutrition and planetary health; (4) evaluating the potential impact of these join indicators on a wide range of stakeholders including policymakers, food producers, manufacturers, retailers and consumers.

Research interests: My research interests include healthy & sustainable food policy, public health nutrition, the intersection of health and environmental labelling of food, and climate change mitigation strategy.

Why did you choose the scholarship scheme at Imperial College: I chose the President’s PhD Scholarship scheme because the opportunities are unparalleled! Not only does it enable a number of diverse students to pursue their research goals, it also creates a community and network for future career choices.

Name: Theo Rashid
Department: Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Title of Research: Modelling small-area life expectancy in England
Email: theo.rashid15@imperial.ac.uk
Personal Web Page address: https://theorashid.github.io
Supervisor(s): Professor Majid Ezzati, Dr James Bennett, Dr Seth Flaxman, Professor Mireille Toledano

About me: Prior to my PhD studies, I completed an MSci in Physics with Theoretical Physics, also at Imperial College. I focussed on atmospheric physics, taking several research internships in Professor Ralf Toumi’s Extreme Events group. Here, we conducted a statistical, global study looking into how the life cycle of a hurricane has shortened, and which physical processes in the atmosphere have caused this.

Summary of Research: As part of the Pathways to Equitable Healthy Cities collaboration, my research looks at small-area trends in mortality in London and England using both Bayesian parametric and nonparametric models. I am interested in how environmental and economic deprivation impact different subgroups of the population.

I am also part of a project modelling excess Covid-19 deaths across over 20 countries.

Research interests: Social determinants of health, Bayesian machine learning, socioeconomic inequality

Why did you choose the scholarship scheme at Imperial College: The President’s PhD Scholarship Scheme is the most prestigious at Imperial College. Beyond the financial incentive, the scheme allows you to be part of a college-wide community of like-minded PhD students.

Name: Souro Chowdhury
Department: Department of Chemistry
Title of Research: Targeting DNA/RNA G-quadruplex structures using chemical-biology approaches to enable therapeutic intervention in neurodegenerative diseases
Email: souro@imperial.ac.uk
Personal Web Page address: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/s.chowdhury19

About me: Souro is a PhD Candidate in Chemical Biology, in the Department of Chemistry. Souro completed his undergraduate and Masters education from the University of Manchester where he specialised in Organic Chemistry working in the group of Prof. David Procter. He also acquired additional experiences in Computational Biology working in Cambridge at EMBL-EBI under the supervision of Prof. Dame Janet Thornton FRS. His time working in Computational Biology of enzyme-mechanisms as a chemist greatly inspired him to look at atoms and molecules, distances and forces for the first time from a life-science perspective, leading him to the interdisciplinary field of Chemical Biology. Souro subsequently worked for a year at the pharmaceutical company Hoffmann-La Roche (Roche) at their global headquarters in Basel, Switzerland in their RNA Therapeutics Research division, that further broadened his research vision and motivated him to pursue a Doctoral degree in the field of nucleic acid chemistry.

Outside of research, Souro is interested in writing and in public-communication of science. He enjoys reading and thinking on broader social issues that can affects science and ability to do science  and is a member of the Equality, Diversity, Inclusion (EDI) committee in the Department of Chemistry.

Summary of Research: The discovery of the double-helix structure of the DNA in 1960s by scientists including Rosalind Franklin, Francis Crick, James Watson amongst others made the iconic ‘double—helix’ structure ubiquitous across scientific disciplines and even in popular culture. However, around the same time there was early evidence suggesting that the DNA can adopt alternative structures, including a “quadruple—helix” topology. It is now well-established that DNA (and RNA) sequences that are rich in Guanine (which is one of the four DNA bases, the others being Adenine, Thymine and Cytosine) can often fold into alternative structures called G-quadruplexes (G4s). Over the past 2 decades, mounting evidence has accumulated that these structures are distributed throughout the human genome and transcriptome, and they have been shown to exist in living human cells.

Crucially, the presence of these G4 structures have been associated with many diseases in humans, including several types of cancers and neurodegenerative conditions such as ALS and FTD – one of the leading causes of dementia at old age. Souro’s research explores the design and synthesis of chemical constructs that can target and disrupt specific G4s, and measuring their impact on biological phenotypes such as gene-expression and protein-translation in the context of diseases. The project is highly interdisciplinary and makes use of many techniques including synthetic organic chemistry, biophysics and cell-biology.

Research interests: In a broad sense, Souro’s research interest is to create chemical-biology tools that can help understand, and improve human health and wellbeing. Particular research interests include the usage of chemically-modified antisense oligonculeotides (ASOs) and CRISPR-Cas9 systems as chemical-biology probes to investigate fundamental biological questions

Why did you choose the scholarship scheme at Imperial College: The President’s PhD Scholarship scheme undoubtedly gives the recipients the capability to undertake research without being discouraged by financial barriers and risks. The highly prestigious and selective scholarship covers full funding for international and UK tuition fees, a consumables grant and a very generous stipend that enables researchers to have financial security during the entire period of their PhD research at Imperial. In practise, this means that researchers can potentially achieve a degree of independence in their project and do not necessarily need to undertake other work or duties to supplement their income – allowing complete freedom and focus on their research.

Name: Alisia Fadini
Department: Life Sciences
Title of Research: Investigating Ultrafast Dynamics in Photoactivated Proteins
Email: alisia.fadini15@imperial.ac.uk
Supervisor(s): Prof Jasper van Thor

About me: I am originally from the city of Milan, in Italy. I came to Imperial in 2015 for my BSc in Biochemistry, where I was first introduced to the structural mechanisms of proteins.  My curiosity towards how these incredible molecular machines are able to execute specific and efficient catalysis lead me to spend 12 months at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University. SLAC houses a novel radiation source that emits extremely intense and brief X-ray pulses (an XFEL): with this resource it is possible to “film” atomic positions in photoactive proteins over time, bringing us closer to understanding the link between dynamics and function.

Summary of Research: Photon absorption by a protein can be the trigger for important biological reactions, such as those that occur in photosynthesis. My aim at Imperial is to apply spectroscopy and crystallography to characterize the ultrafast dynamical response in biologically relevant proteins after this photoexcitation. Ultimately, I am interested in the connection between the ultrafast changes that happen right after light absorption and the slower structural dynamics of the protein. How is information transferred across the protein network and how are dynamics tuned to ensure efficiency?

Research interests: Protein dynamics and function, enzyme catalysis, photobiology, XFELs, spectroscopy and structural biology methods.

Why did you choose the scholarship scheme at Imperial College: This award has given me the freedom to propose and pursue my own research interests, as well as supporting me with additional funding to travel for experiments and conferences. Imperial is an exciting place to be academically. The President’s scholarship scheme then enables us to meet outstanding and interesting people from very different disciplines, which I have personally found extremely valuable. 

Name: Ronan Laker
Department: Physics
Title of Research: Structure of the Inner Heliosphere
Email: ronan.laker15@imperial.ac.uk
Personal Web Page address: www.ronanlaker.com
Supervisor(s): Prof Timothy Horbury

About me: I was very much familiar with Imperial College before becoming a PhD Presents’ Scholar, as I completed my MSci in Physics here, winning the Abdus Salam Prize at my graduation in 2019. During my MSci project, I worked on data from the newly launched Parker Solar Probe, with my work contributing to one of the first Nature papers from the mission. This led to me undertaking a UROP in the same field, the summer before beginning my PhD studies.

Summary of Research: The solar wind is a highly conducting plasma that expands outwards from the Sun’s corona at supersonic speeds, and low particle densities. This makes the solar wind an ideal laboratory to study the physical processes of plasmas that cannot be replicated on Earth, purely due to the large scales and low densities involved. I use data from the newly launched Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter missions, with the latter hosting an instrument built at Imperial College London. I am interested in using multiple spacecraft to measure the 3D shape of large-scale structures in the solar wind, particularly the heliospheric current sheet and stream interaction regions. This is the start of a golden age for studying the solar wind and its potential impact on Earth, and I am privileged to be involved.

Research interests: Solar wind, timeseries analysis, plasma physics and the heliosphere.

Why did you choose the scholarship scheme at Imperial College: Imperial has a magnetometer laboratory for spacecraft and has been involved in space missions for 20+ years, meaning it is at the forefront of space physics research. The scholarship scheme has given me financial freedom to carry out my research and explore other interests, such as captaining Imperial’s third football team.

Name: Ming Li
Department: Department of Materials
Title of Research: Bioinspired Structural Materials
Email: m.li19@imperial.ac.uk
Personal Web Page address: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/structural-ceramics/people/phd-students/
Supervisor(s): Eduardo Saiz, Florian Bouville

About me: Ming Li is a member of the President Scholar Group (2019-2023) currently, and pursuing his Ph.D. degree under the supervision of Prof. Eduardo Saiz at the Center of Advanced Structural Ceramics, Department of Materials, Imperial College London, the UK. He achieved his BE degree from China University of Petroleum (Beijing) in 2018.

Summary of Research: His research containing the development of new processing techniques for the fabrication of ceramic-based  intelligent manipulation materials, self-healing & controllable composites, and super-hydrophobic / oleophobic surface, in particular hierarchical composites with bioinspired architectures.

Research interests: His research interest focuses on the design and synthesis of bioinspired interfacial materials with controllable adhesion and wettability, especially multi-level response interfaces with special functions. As well as the construction of smart soft materials, e.g. responsive and bioinspired hydrogels.

Past research:

Topic 1: Bio-inspired and bio-mimetic materials

• Reference:Li, M., Xu, Q., Wu, X., Li, W., Lan, W., Heng, L., Street, J. and Xia, Z., 2018. Tough reversible adhesion properties of a dry self-cleaning biomimetic surface. ACS applied materials & interfaces, 10(31), pp.26787-26794.
• Highlight by Chemistry View：https://www.chemistryviews.org/details/news/11084784/Self-Cleaning_Sticky_Surfaces_Inspired_by_Geckos.html

Topic 2: Application of high-yield two-dimensional quantum dots and fluorescent hydrogels in the fields of tracking and bone wound healing

• Reference:Li, M., Li, W., Cai, W., Zhang, X., Wang, Z., Street, J., Ong, W.J., Xia, Z. and Xu, Q., 2019. A self-healing hydrogel with pressure sensitive photoluminescence for remote force measurement and healing assessment. Materials Horizons, 6(4), pp.703-710. (Cover)
• Highlight by Polymer Science: http://dy.163.com/v2/article/detail/E8RUIVRG05119KL5.html

Why did you choose the scholarship scheme at Imperial College: This is an outstanding project and I am deeply honored to be a member of it.

Name: Massimo Dello Preite

Department: Imperial College Business School

Title of Research: Cross-sectional Methods in Empirical Asset Pricing 

Email: m.dello-preite18@imperial.ac.uk
Personal Web Page address:  https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/m.dello-preite18
Supervisor(s): Paolo Zaffaroni, Raman Uppal

About me: I got my both my undergraduate and my first master’s degrees in “Actuarial and Financial Sciences” in Rome, at university “La Sapienza”. Right after graduating I worked for approximately 1 year in the insurance sector: I started as a quantitative researcher in an Italian company specialised on internal models for insurances and subsequently I joined the actuarial services in one of the big four of advisory. The same year I entered the Italian registry of actuaries. Despite the positive memories I have on my working experience, it’s during this year that I reached the conclusion to focus more on research and ideally to pursue an academic career in Finance. Convinced of this path, to strengthen my background and to get prepared at my best for the doctoral programme, I joined the MSc in “Econometrics and Mathematical Economics” at LSE, where I took some modules I didn’t go through in my previous studies yet, like microeconomics, macroeconomics and econometrics. Finally, the following year I joined the doctoral programme at Imperial College Business School.

Summary of Research: The area where I do research is named “Empirical Asset Pricing”.

Standard econometric methods in finance usually rely on having long time series of data, and they do not fully exploit the cross-sectional information. This is a huge limitation if we think that for some assets long time series might not be available due to structural breaks in the economy, or more simply, because they recently entered the market.

Looking at the cross-sectional dimension instead, thousands of assets are traded every day. In addition, in the last 30 years, in the wake of the technological development that impacted both economic and non-economic sectors, financial markets went through a massive digitalisation process and nowadays all these data are readily available.

It follows that having a large cross-section is more likely than having a long time series.

Furthermore, the cross-section has the advantage of containing information on the pricing kernel, or Stochastic Discount Factor, which is the main object of interest in asset pricing. Intuitively, the larger the cross-section, the more information can be extracted from the data on the SDF.

Being able to fully exploit the information hidden in the cross-section has an important impact on both investment decisions and portfolio choice for financial institutions. Nonetheless, it might be of help to Central Banks to run market analysis and take decisions on policies.

Research interests: If I had to stick to finance, I would say Asset Pricing and Empirical Asset Pricing. More broadly, due to my background in actuarial science and statistics, I’m also interested in Insurances (pricing of contracts mainly) and Econometrics.

Why did you choose the scholarship scheme at Imperial College: The President’s Scholarship is a prestigious recognition to be awarded, and it definitely improved my experience as a PhD student. First of all, being a scholar means being part of a cross-community which allowed me to get in touch with other students from different departments. Secondly, it gives a huge economical support to live in London, other than a generous yearly budget to attend conferences and subsidize research material.