NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Vatic Investments (“Vatic” or the “Firm”), a systematic quantitative investment manager, announced today the appointment of Li Deng, Ph.D., as Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer and Global Head of Machine Learning, effective May 9, 2022. Dr. Deng will report to James Chiu, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Vatic.
Recognized as one of the world’s leading experts in AI, speech technology and machine learning, Dr. Deng was previously Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer and Head of Machine Learning at Citadel LLC. Before that, he was the Chief Scientist of AI, Founder of Deep Learning Technology Center, and Partner Research Manager at Microsoft for over 17 years. Prior to Microsoft, Dr. Deng worked for nearly a decade as a tenured professor at the University of Waterloo. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Science and Technology of China, and his Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Since 2000, Dr. Deng has also been an Affiliate Full Professor at the University of Washington, Seattle, and a Fellow of the Academy of Engineering of Canada, the Academy of Sciences (Washington State), the IEEE, Acoustical Society of America, and ISCA, among other technical societies.
During his nearly 30-year career in academia, technology and finance, Dr. 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 recognized as the “Godfather of Deep Learning.” The paper has received about 11,000 academic citations as of May 2022.
In recognition of his pioneering AI research on disrupting speech recognition using large-scale deep learning, Dr. Deng has been honored with many of the AI industry’s highest awards, including the IEEE SPS Technical Achievement Award for “Outstanding Contributions to Automatic Speech Recognition & Deep Learning” (2015) and, separately, the IEEE SPS “Industrial Leader Award” (2019). Most recently, he was presented with the AI-2000 Most Influential Scholar Award.
“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 James Chiu, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Vatic. “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,” Dr. 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.”
About Vatic Investments
Vatic Investments is a systematic quantitative investment management firm where traders, AI researchers and technologists collaborate to develop autonomous trading agents and state-of-the-art investment software. The firm is data-driven, with machine learning and cutting-edge technology piloting its trading strategies. Learn more at www.vaticinvestments.com.