MFE Master project in industry

The Master project in industry is a 6-month research-oriented project done within the frame of an internship in company in the financial industry during the last semester of the MFE program. This provides students the opportunity to put into practice the academic knowledge acquired during their studies at EPFL, gain some professional experience and familiarize themselves with company processes.

Duration | Dates | Location

Duration: The Master project in industry should last 6 months.

Session dates: Spring session (from the end of February) / Fall session (from the end of July).

Requirements: The Master project in ‘Financial Engineering’ takes place during the last semester of the Master program (usually after the three semesters of coursework).

It can start upon the successful completion of the Master’s cycle (or the conditional admission to the Master’s project).

Location: The Master Project in industry must be carried out in a non-academic organization (company, public organization), in Switzerland or abroad.

Project definition & supervision

As an integral part of their studies MFE students must spend a period of 25 weeks as interns in the financial industry in Switzerland or abroad. During this time students learn to put in practice the skills acquired in their coursework, and write a Master Thesis under the joint supervision of an EPFL faculty member and a mentor from the host institutions.

The topic of the Master’s thesis may be proposed either by the company, by the student, or by the academic supervisor. The topic must be clearly defined by the student, the academic supervisor and the company supervisor. All 3 parties must agree on the project outlines (formalized in a document).

  • The topic of the MFE master project has to be related to finance.
  • The student is required to identify the research topic to be addressed and propose a methodology and plan deliverables. It must include a research or innovation component and refer to theory.
  • It is supervised by a company supervisor and an academic supervisor.

Validation of the Master project

The student must submit a written Master thesis at the end of the project and conduct an oral defense in front of a jury (both supervisors).

The successful oral defense of the thesis leads to the completion of the Master in Financial Engineering.

More details and information are available to current students on Moodle in the “FIN – 599(pm)” section.

How to find a Master project

  • Students can apply through different channels (IS-Academia internship portal, job boards, Linkedin…). Information and resources are provided by their Internship coordinator.
  • Employers can post offers on the EPFL internship portal
  • Visit the EPFL Forum in October, the largest recruitment fair in Europe

Previous MFE Master Projects

The internship and associated master thesis focus on various aspects of finance and financial engineering including for example credit-risk, derivatives pricing and hedging, portfolio and asset management, private equity, commodities trading, financial market organization and regulation, and corporate finance.

  1. ML Disruption applied to the Venture Capital end-to-end pipeline
  2. Generative Adversarial Networks for portfolio risk management
  3. An alternative approach to returns on OTC oil derivatives.
  4. Autoencoders and their applications
  5. Factor rotation investing based on market regimes
  6. Forecasting CPI inflation and GDP in the Euro area
  7. Exploring Portfolio Optimization Techniques: Insights from Finaport
  8. US Power Price Forecast
  9. Risk Management Techniques for Commodity Trading
  10. Cyber risk and the cross-section of stock returns
  11. Refinery throughput prediction based on machine learning
  12. Sentiment analysis on analysts’ reports
  13. Portfolio Optimization with QIS Strategies
  14. FX Signal Generator: Machine Learning applied to FX News, Google Trends and OECD data
  15. Assessment of ESG practices using Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning
  16. On the benefit of using Range-Based Volatility measures for Portfolio construction
  17. Trend-Following’s impact on the 60/40 portfolio
  18. MFE Internship in Private Banking
  19. Digital transformation of Private Equity
  20. Private Equity Funds Cash Flows Forecasting with the Machine Learning Models
  21. Kernel-Based Currency Hedging
  22. 3 Essays on Value at Risk
  23. The use of NGFS climate scenarios to assess mortgage portfolio impact
  24. A Dynamic Model to Price Credit Spreads in Direct Lending
  25. Valuation of Storing Crude Oil
  26. Liquidity Management – Margin Call Settlement
  27. Benchmarking Credit Risk Models with ML
  28. Swiss Market Rent Estimation: A Statistical Machine Learning Approach
  29. Cash Transparency Using Graph Database Technology
  30. Equity Portfolio Return and Risk Projections Under Different Carbon Price Scenarios
  31. NLP Techniques for the Improvement of Financial Estimation
  32. Statistical demand forecasting in a growing market
  33. Alpha Generation using Options Implied Trading Signals
  34. Valuation and optimal holding time models for real estate investments
  35. Can option characteristics serve as indicators of cross-sectional disparities in stock performance?
  36. Quantifying Credit Risk in Power Purchase Agreements: The Geske Compound Option Approach
  1. Valuation and Optimization in Transitioning Electricity Markets
  2. The new risk and return of venture capital: Empirical study on Crunchbase data
  3. Risk Management at TotalEnergies
  4. Transparency of Disclosure in EFG Bank
  5. Estimating and forecasting the tails of non-normal distributions
  6. Investment factor timing on the MSCI Factors
  7. Internal control systems failures: analysis and suggestions
  8. Refined View on Balance Sheet Stress Testing
  9. A pricing model for negative commodities futures
  10. Spread Option Pricing and the LNG Market
  11. Boosting Credit Rating Models
  12. Is Cultivated Meat a Good Bet?
  13. Trading Strategies in the European Emission Allowance (EUA) Options Market
  14. Optimal Portfolio Allocation within Different Market Regimes
  15. Bayesian Networks and their use in Financial Markets
  16. A Machine Learning Approach to Backfill Data for VaR calculation
  17. About the impact of ESG integration on Factor strategies and optimal mean-variance portfolios
  18. Hedging climate change news: e-scores, cable news channels and fama-french factors
  19. Analysing ESG Portfolio Return
  20. Constructing a Transaction-based Index for Private Equity
  21. A Filtered Historical Simulation Approach to the Implied Volatility Return of Cryptocurrency ETFs
  22. Agri-commodity Prices Prediction: An Application to Phosphates Fertilizers
  23. Explainable Machine Learning for Asset Allocation
  24. The effects of social norms on Markets: Does owning Sin stocks offer a premium or discount for its investors?
  25. Bayesian Inference for FX forwards
  1. Agri-commodity Prices Prediction: An Application to Phosphates Fertilizers
  2. Explainable Machine Learning for Asset Allocation
  3. The effects of social norms on Markets: Does owning Sin stocks offer a premium or discount for its investors?
  4. Bayesian Inference for FX forwards
  5. Valuation and Optimization in Transitioning Electricity Markets
  6. Researcher in applications of financial methods for emergent technology pricing and portfolio management
  7. Internship – Middle Office Derivatives
  8. Financial Products analyst
  9. Estimating and forecasting the tails of non-normal distributions
  10. Quantitative analyst
  11. Internal control systems failures: analysis and suggestions
  12. Firmwide stress methodology internship
  13. Alternative pricing approach to incorporate the possibility of  negative futures prices in commodities derivatives
  14. Pricing and Risk Management in LNG and Freight Markets
  15. Boosting Credit Rating Models
  16. Challenges in European VCs catching up with the US VCs
  17. Analyzing Trading Strategies within the Carbon Market
  18. Optimal Portfolio Allocation within Different Market Regimes
  19. Glencore – Quantitative Analyst
  20. Pricing of Derivatives
  21. Graduate Portfolio Engineering and Risk
  22. Quantitative climate risk management for financial institutions
  23. Maximising  ESG protfolio return
  24. Quantitative Research Intern
  25. Quantitative Analytics Associate Program – Off-Cycle Internship
  1. Credit investable indices
  2. Quantitative Analyst
  3. Different Implementation of Equity Risk Premia
  4. An analysis of risk factors in Swiss institutional portfolios.
  5. Using Big Data in Thematic Investing
  6. New allocation methodologies with deep reinforcement learning techniques
  7. Covid-19 and Government Debt: An Analysis
  8. Introduction to Economic Scenario Generators
  9. Multivariate backtests and copulas
  10. Quantitative Analyst Internship
  11. Data Science Expert
  12. A Machine Learning Approach for Loss Reserving on a Macro-Level Basis
  13. Risk Contribution Estimation in Credit Portfolios
  14. Dynamic Asset Allocation
  15. Risk Metrics for Commodity Investments
  16. Fair Value Modelling for Emerging Market Exchange-Traded Funds
  17. Quantitative Risk Analysis in FX market
  18. Building next generation electronic trading strategies using an agent-based approach
  19. A Dynamic Factor Model Framework for Commodity Markets
  20. Integrating ESG data into the systematic investment process
  21. Modelling portfolios of cyber-related emerging technologies: a complex-system approach
  22. Deep Reinforcement Learning in Volatility Trading
  23. Evaluation and adjustment of an overlay model for a  global equity portfolio.
  24. Transparency disclosure for the evolution of Net Other Income
  25. Industry Analysis Assistant
  26. How Shadow Banking replaces the Role of Banks and affects Macro-economy in China?
  27. Quantitative Asset Management: exploring new ways of hedging and managing inventory risk
  1. Analyst M&A
  2. Residualized Multi-Factor Portfolio
  3. Forecast, Cash Flow Valuation, and Financial Statement Analysis
  4. A DSGE Model for Mortgage Lending During the COVID-19 Pandemic
  5. Gasoil Asian S&D
  6. Junior Portfolio & Markets Analyst
  7. Pricing Liquidity through replication of an Enforced Stop-Loss structured product
  8. Quantitative Portfolio Construction
  9. Venture Capital Financing and Valuation of Biotech Startups: a Case Study on MedXCell’s Valuation
  10. Leverage data to have a deeper understanding of client investment preferences
  11. Valuation of American Airlines during COVID-19 pandemic
  12. Research Analyst
  13. Initial margin calculation for non-cleared OTC Derivatives
  14. Volatility Forecasting and Investment Strategies: Dynamic Volatility Modeling and Machine Learning Techniques to Build Investment Strategies on Equity Market
  15. Forecasting Swiss Government interest expenses using MIDAS
  16. Trading the convexity of the oïl futures curve
  17. Quantitative Evaluation of Private Companies
  18. A Machine Learning Trading Approach on Energy Futures Market
  19. Mutli-Period Portfolio Optimization
  20. Quant developer intern
  21. A spread model for oil indexes and geographical arbitrage options
  22. Quantitative Asset Management
  23. Reinsurance Portfolios and Comparison of Counterparty Matching Tools
  24. Pricing of Volatility Products with Local and Stochastic Volatility Models
  25. Venture Capital & Private Equity: analysis and valuation of Fintech Unicorns
  26. Data Science Expert
  27. Digitalization of an Institutional Multi-Asset Investment Process of a Global Asset Manager
  28. The Failure of DaimlerChrysler
  29. Replication of Private Equity with Public Securities
  30. A Multi-Asset View on the Benefits of Implied Volatility Indices
  31. An Explainable Machine Learning Framework for Cross-Sectional Forecast-Based Fund Selection
  32. Reinforcement learning methods in option pricing.
  33. Modelling equity fund flows
  34. Stochastic Volatility and Jump Diffusion Modeling for Investment Funds
  35. Leveraging consumer data to identify up-sell and cross-sell opportunities
  36. Quantitative Researcher

1. A Network Approach for Risk and Porfolio Management
2. Gas index prediction and asset optimization: the case of Russian gas supplies to Europe
3. An Econometric Risk Factor Model for Hedge Funds Analysis
4. Active Management and Outperformance
5. The benefits of a matchmaking algorithm between investors and developers in the Renewable Energy Industry
6. Measuring liquidity risk: the case of an investment portfolio
7. Pricing model of Energy Derivatives
8. Nowcasting in Financial Market
9. Institutional Private Equity Portfolios : a Bottom-Up Approcah to Fund Valuation and Cash Flow forecasting
10. Macroeconomic Factor Analysis of Stock Returns in the Euro Area
11. Creation of Liquidity measure for an equity portfolio and liquidity analysis of a Swiss and a European portfolio
12. Dynamic risk allocation within a portfolio of algorithmic trading strategies
13. Allocating funding costs for OTC cash collateral margining
14. Impact de la réglementation FRTB sur le calcul des Risk Weighted Assets en méthode Standard, appliqué sur les activités Actions.
15. Earning Seasons as the Beating Heart of the Financial Markets
16. Research Intern
17. Assessing the Viability of Machine Learning for Systematic Trading
18. Least Squares Monte Carlo applied to commodity derivatives
19. The Development of Investment Process based on Financial Indicators
20.Bank’s liquidity: modeling repro (hair)cuts
21. On Industrial Metal Price Forecasting
22. Digital Investment Managers – Challenges and Opportunities
23. Pricing of Bermudan swaptions in LIBOR market model
24. Factors affecting vegetables oil prices
25. FX Advisory – analysis of a revenue model
26. Study on the Performance Impact on Smart Beat Investement Strategies caused by Rebalancing
27. Exchange Rate Predictions with Support Vector Machine and Neural Network
28. Dynamic funds’ risk factor exposures

1. Understanding the performance of an algorithmic trading strategy
2. Fed funds futures and monetary policy analysis
3. Factors Study and Trading Strategies
4. Model independent Measurements and Phantoms Liquidity in Cross-Asset High-Frequency Trading
5. Position Transparency and Fund Overlapping Effects in Alternative Risk Premia Investing
6. Modeling of volatility strategies: how to trade volatility?
7. Treasury Bond Futures and Contract Specifications
8. Stochastic Implied Volatility Modelling
9. Quantitative Risk Analyst – Model Risk Management
10. Reference Portfolios
11. Affine Framework for Monte Carlo VaR
12. Peer-based performance evaluation of private equity funds
13. Monte Carlo Methods and Improvements for American Option Pricing
14. The predictive power of fund flows
15. Predictive Performance of Political risk and Exchange Traded Fund Liquidity Risk.
16.Algorithmic Trading in Commodity Markets
17. Modelling and forecast of agricultural commodities prices and volatility
18. Research on the Chinese Companies Traded Overseas
19. Stastical Business Cycle Analysis and Asset Allocation
20. Market Bubbles as Stock Price Departures from Fundamental Macroeconomics Valuations
21. Backtesting and simulation extensions of Value-at-Risk (VaR) models in global energy commodities
22. Adapted Black-Litterman Implementation for Long-Only Thematic Equity Funds.
23. SGP off-cycle intenship
24. UK Wealth Management – Analysis of the Industry
25. Modelling Commodities: an Effective Framework for Options Pricing
26. Modelling Directional Way Risk in the commodities markets
27. The Effect of Social Performance on Financial Performance in Microfinance.
28. Cross-Asset Predictive Power of Real-Time Macroeconomic Indices
29. A Risk Premia Approach to Portfolio Optimization
30. Quantitative Research in Investments Strategies: Macro Analysis Process (MAP)

  1. Premium model and arbitrage strategy of Chinese A/H shares
  2. Bayesian networks model and application in finance with partially observed data
  3. Stochastic modelling of electricity markets
  4. Market tail risk in asset returns
  5. Added value of DCF in a sustainable listed equity investing strategy
  6. U.S. gulf soybean basis
  7. Hedge fund conviction: evidence from 13F-filings
  8. CVA modeling in oil markets
  9. Machine learning for portfolio optimization in the Chinese A-shares market
  10. Analysis of the WTI and brent markets
  11. Robust estimation and decomposition of tail risk
  12. Understanding the risk neutral distribution
  13. Operational research on robo-advisors and semi-passive investments
  14. Arbitrage-free parameterization of the implied volatility surface
  15. Research on enterprise evaluation
  16. A network analysis of stock communities and market states
  17. Liquidity drops on financial markets
  18. Bank’s exposure to the lbo loan market during the financial crisis
  19. European rates trading
  20. Multi-period wealth management: an industrial framework
  21. Derivatives trading strategies on the grain markets
  22. Minimum volatility: Long-term evidence, risk exposures, potential pitfalls and improvements.
  23. Intraday volatility patterns in FX rates
  24. Quantitative strategy allocation and portfolio construction of a fund of hedge funds
  25. Modeling foreign exchange risk exposure
  26. Credit linked notes on cds index tranches
  27. Stochastic modelling of private equity investment programs
  28. Bayesian model averaging for risk factor selection
  29. PCA mean reversion trading strategy on the futures curve
  30. Pricing of inflation-indexed derivatives
  31. Performance evaluation and risk shifting of Chinese mutual funds
  32. Economic value and market capitalization of insurance companies: a panel data analysis
  33. The research on the pe-backed going private of us-listed Chinese enterprises
  1. Modeling of a cross-asset investment strategy
  2. A dynamic portfolio allocation and behavioral analysis indicators
  3. Independent product valuation
  4. US agricultural commodities freight rates modeling
  5. Company valuation
  6. Private equity replicator
  7. Asset management
  8. Momentum investing in equities using machine learning methods
  9. Bayesian and ensemble methods for pattern recognition in financial databases
  10. Extending the risk management functionalities of convertible bonds business solution
  11. Investigation of Heston stochastic local volatility model
  12. How can statistical learning leverage data in the insurance industry?
  13. Structuring
  14. Betting against beta
  15. Volatility of fixed income markets
  16. Equity derivatives structuring
  17. The valuation of high-tech companies via DCF and comparable
  18. A quantitative analysis of hedge fund returns
  19. Credit and Funding value adjustments
  20. Effect of constraints in construction of optimal equity portfolios
  21. Quantitative analysis in asset management
  22. Derivatives pricing and creation of financial time series
  23. Risk allocation in a multi-asset framework
  24. Advanced market systematic risk indicators
  25. Market microstructure
  26. Automated algorithmic quantitative performance analysis
  27. The role of correspondent banks in capital markets
  28. Fat-tailed stochastic interest rate models
  29. Economic valuation of insurance companies
  30. Arbitrage vs. balance sheet CLOs: an empirical comparison
  31. Stress testing
  32. Returns-based style analysis of mutual funds
  33. Research on affine term structure model
  34. Investment solutions analysis
  35. Alternative investment’s factors
  36. Market consistent economic scenario generator

Example of host institutions

The MFE has established a strong reputation in the financial industry and has an excellent track record in developing internship placements and career opportunities for graduates.

The institutions hosting MFE internships include banks and insurance companies, asset management firms and hedge funds, commodities trading firms and various other institutions that are not necessarily part of the financial industry but who face problems that our graduates can help solve using their financial engineering skills.

A complete list of the institutions having hosted MFE internships can be accessed below. We thank each of them for their support, and for providing our students with opportunities to put their skills to practice.

  • AXA Winterthur: Winterthur, Switzerland, New York, USA and Paris, France
  • Banca Comerciala Romana, Bucharest, Romania
  • Banque Internationale Arabe de Tunisie, Tunis, Tunisie
  • Banque Martin Maurel Sella, Monaco
  • Banque privée Edmond de Rothschild, Geneva, Switzerland
  • Banque Rothschild, Geneva, Switzerland
  • Banque Syz Geneva, Switzerland
  • BCV, Lausanne, Switzerland
  • Benjamin de Rothschild SA, Geneva, Switzerland
  • BNP Paribas, Geneva, Switzerland and Paris, France
  • BTG Pactual, Geneva, Switzerland
  • Credit Suisse: London, UK; Lausanne and Zurich, Switzerland
  • Deutsche Bank: Frankfurt, Germany and Geneva, Switzerland
  • Goldman Sachs, London, UK
  • Helvea, Geneva, Switzerland
  • HSBC, Paris, France
  • JPMorgan: London, UK and Geneva, Switzerland
  • Julius Baer, Zurich, Switzerland
  • La Mobilière, Nyon, Switzerland
  • Lazard Frères, Paris, France
  • Lombard Odier, Geneva, Switzerland and London, UK
  • Pictet Alternative Advisors, Geneva, Switzerland
  • Société Générale, Paris, France
  • Swiss Life, Zurich, Switzerland
  • Swiss Life Asset Managers, Zurich, Switzerland
  • Swissquote Bank, Gland, Switzerland
  • SwissRe, Zurich, Switzerland
  • UBS, Zurich, Switzerland and London, UK
  • Union Bancaire Privé, Geneva, Switzerland
  • ZKB, Zurich, Switzerland
  • 4Elements, Singapore, Singapore
  • Aeris Capital AG, Pfäffikon, Switzerland
  • AXA Investment Managers, Paris, France
  • BlueCrest Capital Management, Geneva, Switzerland
  • Brevan Howard, London, UK
  • Cobe Investment Management, Shanghai, China
  • Chorus Capital, London, UK
  • Century Securities, Beijing, China
  • Dominice & Co, Geneva, Switzerland
  • DTC Investment Management, Beijing, China
  • Egerton Capital, London, UK
  • Exane Derivatives, Geneva, Switzerland and Paris, France
  • Fisch Asset Management, Zurich, Switzerland
  • Global View Investments, Geneva, Switzerland
  • Harris Lane Investments, Geneva, Switzerland
  • Jabre Capital, Geneva, Switzerland
  • Kepler Cheuvreux, Geneva, Switzerland
  • LGT Capital Management, Pfäffikon, Switzerland
  • Lyxor Asset management, Paris, France
  • Nafora, Lausanne, Switzerland
  • Novus, Zurich, Switzerland
  • Olsen, Zurich, Swizerland
  • Orient Security Company, Hong Kong, China
  • Patrimonium, Lausanne, Switzerland
  • Prestinvest, Geneva, Switzerland
  • Ping An Asset Management, China
  • Quantifusion Asset Management, Shanghai, China
  • Rothschild HDF Investment Solutions, Paris, France
  • Swiss Capital Alternative Investments, Zurich, Switzerland
  • Transmarket Group, Martigny, Switzerland
  • Tudor Capital Europe, London, UK
  • Unigestion, Geneva, Switzerland
  • AXPO, Baden, Switzerland
  • Hellenic Petroleum SA Athens, Greece
  • Mercuria Energy Trading, Geneva, Switzerland
  • Roquette Frères, Vernier, Switzerland
  • TOTSA, Geneva, Switzerland
  • Trafigura, Geneva, Switzerland
  • Basel Economics, Basel, Switzerland
  • BIT (International Labour Office), Geneva, Switzerland
  • DataYes, Shanghai, China
  • Derivative Partners Research, Zurich, Switzerland
  • eBay International, Bern, Switzerland
  • Ernst & Young, Geneva, Switzerland
  • FIDA, Finanza Dati Analisi, Torino, Italy
  • FinLab, Geneva, Switzerland
  • Hesabi, Iran
  • Mazars, Paris, France
  • Murex, Paris, France
  • Nathal, Actuaries and consultants, Mexico City, Mexico
  • NLMK, Moscow, Russia
  • Ontonix, Como, Italy
  • Philip Morris SA Lausanne, Switzerland
  • Procter & Gamble Geneva, Switzerland
  • SAGE SA, Lausanne, Switzerland
  • Sanli, Pastore & Hill, Los Angeles, USA
  • Symbiotics SA, Geneva, Switzerland
  • SwissQuant Group AG, Zurich, Switzerland
  • Umnyah Advisors, Geneva, Switzerland
  • United Nations, Geneva, Switzerland

Student testimonial

During the internship, I always have the chance to discuss the thesis with my professor and company mentor, which is very unique among all the MFE programs around the world.

Danyu Wang, MFE Alumnus 2021

Internship supervisor testimonial

I am very impressed with the superb preparation the MFE program does, not only on the hard subject-matter skills, but also on the soft skills that matter a lot in a corporate context.

Internship supervisor, Mercuria

CONTACT

Internship Coordinator | Ms Marjorie Ebbayilé

[email protected] | Extranef Building