Andrew Janssens hosts Mark Higgins, Co-Founder and Chief Analytics Officer of Beacon, an end-to-end development platform for financial markets that allows traders and quants to build and share code and applications across the front and back office. In this episode you will hear about: - How Mark went from his PhD in physics to the world of finance - How Goldman's Sec DB contributed to their trading edge - Whether finance and FinTech are still appealing for today's PhDs - Some of the latest applications of AI and machine learning in modern trading About Mark Higgins Mark Higgins (PhD) is a veteran of the finance industry, and a true technologist with a PhD in astrophysics. Before co-founding Beacon with Kirat Singh in 2014, Mark spent eight years at JP Morgan, launching and delivering the Athena project, and co-heading the quantitative research group for the investment bank. Prior to JP Morgan he spent eight years at Goldman Sachs where he worked on Goldman's legendary SecDB. About Beacon Beacon is a development platform providing quants and programmers the ability to develop, customize and and roll out analytics and applications for public markets trading. Beacon serves a wide range of investors and has offices in New York, London and Tokyo. For more FinTech insights, follow us below: WFT Medium: medium.com/wharton-fintech WFT Twitter: twitter.com/whartonfintech WFT Instagram: instagram.com/whartonfintech Andrew’s Twitter: twitter.com/Adhjanssens Andrew’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/andrew-p-janssens/