Director's Vision

At the Oxford-Man Institute (OMI) our main objective is to address the key problems associated with financial markets and risk in a way that has significant impact. We achieve this by bringing together outstanding established scholars and brilliant young researchers from a wide range of related disciplines in an environment specifically designed to encourage communication and collaboration. By supporting them in their research, OMI aims to create tools and insights that allow a better and deeper understanding of financial markets, their behaviour, their stability, and their inter-dependence.

The Institute remains dedicated to training the next generation of researchers and aims to attract the highest calibre of young people to come and work here. It is very important that early stage researchers have an opportunity to build a strong disciplinary foundation, without having to prove their work has applications. Our role is to nurture students in their disciplines, whilst enabling them to benefit from being part of a multi-disciplinary team.

One of our main goals going forward is to identify projects of significance that draw on expertise in different disciplines and to create a framework that encourages and enables collaborations between researchers. There is no secret to achieving quality, and results will only come gradually, but through our association with Man Group Plc, and our combination of distinguished senior colleagues, outstanding young researchers, and our tremendous intellectual, physical and computing environment, we have a unique opportunity which we must capitalise on.

Listen to Terry Lyons, Director of OMI, talk about one of the important contributions OMI makes

OMI brings together world experts and my hope is that over time it will be viewed at a national and international level as a portal supporting academic research in the area of quantitative finance. I welcome the engagement of colleagues, practitioners and policy makers and I certainly don’t see this as a solely Oxford based venture.

Public funding for research is in short supply, even for research as critical as the effective quantitative modelling of systemic risk and the impact of regulation. OMI is working to develop research projects shared between the industrial community and the government research agencies that are of broad importance and have a public interest. Undoubtedly, our core funding and the consequent expertise add considerable value to any government/research council funded projects we undertake.

I feel extraordinarily privileged to be Director of OMI.

Professor Terry Lyons

Director