Vatic Investments appointed Li Deng as chief artificial intelligence officer and global head of machine learning this month.
Deng reports to James Chiu, founder and CEO of the now $313 million firm that specializes in systematic quantitative investment. Previously, Deng was chief artificial officer and head of machine learning at Citadel, a role he left in late 2020. Prior to that he was at Microsoft serving as chief scientist of AI, founder of deep learning technology center and partner research for over 17 years. HE also spent over a decade as a tenured professor at the University of Waterloo.
During his nearly 30-year career in academia, technology and finance, Deng has published more than 350 academic papers and authored several books on machine learning and AI, as well as lectured at many of the world’s top universities, institutes and finance summits. In 2012, he published a groundbreaking paper on deep neural networks for speech recognition with Dr. Geoffrey Hinton, a cognitive psychologist and computer scientist who is known as the “Godfather of Deep Learning.” The paper, according to Vatic, has received about 11,000 academic citations as of May 2022.
“We are thrilled to attract a technologist and talent of Li’s caliber. He has dedicated his life to the study of machine learning, signal generation and modeling of financial markets,” said Vatic’s Chiu. “Vatic’s momentum and ability to attract the world’s top academic and financial talent is rooted in the special culture we are creating. Our mission is centered on rigorous research, intense collaboration and removing trading silos to allow the best ideas and strategies to always rise to the top. We welcome Li to our growing Vatic family.”
“I’m excited to join the world-class team of investment professionals at Vatic,” Deng said. “The firm’s intention to continue building an intensely collaborative environment is a key factor in the efficiency of research and in creating sustainable trading strategies both short and long term. We aim to continue bringing in the best AI and machine learning talent in the world to work collaboratively with the investment professional as a joint team in our unique culture at Vatic.”
