Background

As aspiring professionals, the most unsettling news for us college students in the AI era, constantly spread on social media, is that “jobs will be replaced by AI” or that we’ll end up “underemployed.” With so many opinions flying around, being overly pessimistic or overly optimistic seems wrong. Before jumping to any conclusion, we need a solid understanding and enough knowledge to make our own judgments. That’s why Elisa and I decided to launch a series of interviews on each popular career field for graduates, gathering practical insights from seasoned practitioners and professors, in the hope of helping those of us who feel lost right now.

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Giuseppe Nuti about the impact of AI on algorithmic trading.

Dr. Giuseppe Nuti, currently Head of Algorithmic Trading Research at UBS Global Markets, responsible for algorithmic trading and adaptive execution strategies. He has over 18 years of trading experience, having worked at KCG and Citadel in high‑frequency trading, and has experience in interest rate options, swaps, and US and European government bond trading. During his PhD in computer science, his research focused on Markov Decision Processes. In addition, Dr. Nuti teaches at Cornell University.

Episode Outline

1. What is the real role of AI in algorithmic trading? Is it LLMs? Is it reinforcement learning?

2. How does UBS’s algorithmic trading team select and execute projects?

3. What are the risks and opportunities brought by the spread of AI agents for the future of quantitative trading?

4. What is the biggest challenge in applying AI models to financial data processing?

5. If Dr. Giuseppe could go back to his 20s, what would he tell his younger self?