Center for Artificial Intelligence in Business Analytics and Financial Technology

The Center Will Bring New Capabilities to Asset management, Data Analytics, Financial Technology, and Real Estate Firms Through Applications of Advanced Data Science and AI/ML

New York, NY (February 28, 2023) – Columbia University has launched the Center for Artificial Intelligence in Business Analytics and Financial Technology (FinTech), designed to serve as a nexus for research and innovation for the broader financial services industry. By creating a platform where industry and academia can come together to foster new ideas and capabilities, faculty, staff, and students will have the opportunity to apply cutting-edge applications of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and deep learning (DL) to real-world challenges. Housed in the School of Engineering and Applied Science and led by some of the top financial technologists in the world who have extensive experience at major Wall St. firms and hedge funds, the Center establishes Columbia University as one of the leading academic institutions in the world working to improve the impact of the financial services industry.

The Center includes a group dedicated to real estate with the goal of becoming the epicenter of advances in technology in the real estate industry. Whether that’s developing an open-source database of AI and machine learning ready data, working directly with companies to build competitive advantages in the marketplace through advanced technology, producing world-class engineers with experience in real estate data science, supporting diversity initiatives for underrepresented groups in the real estate industry, developing education that pierces the veil of the “black box” behind technology, or presenting findings of research fundamental to the performance of the real estate market, we plan to be the place the industry looks for technological advancements.

The Center has already built strong relationships with major real estate firms such as JPMorgan, Deloitte, and RXR, working on software to assist in asset allocation, market selection, timing indicators, measures of fragility in the capital markets, automated valuation models, models to predict which neighborhoods will grow faster than others, and a platform for comprehensive corporate real estate management decisions (more details on ongoing projects can be provided upon request).

“The software we develop is done collaboratively with our partners with the intent of integrating these solutions into their day-to-day workflow,” says Josh Panknin, Director of Real Estate AI Research and Innovation at the Center. “Our collaborations involve developing more holistic platforms that provide deep insight into market behavior and investment decisions using cutting-edge analytics models. We don’t do things that have already been done. We focus on providing new capabilities to our partners,” Panknin said.

“We use our financial experience from Wall St. and hedge funds, combined with our technical expertise in advanced analytics, to better understand industry needs and offer data-driven solutions that have not been utilized before. This brings significant value to industry operations through better efficiency and new capabilities,” says Professor Ali Hirsa, Director of the Center for AI in Business Analytics and FinTech and Director of Financial Engineering at Columbia Engineering. Our goal is to bring the more sophisticated approaches to financial technology used for years by hedge funds and Wall St. into the real estate sector.

The Center fills a major void in the real estate industry, which has not kept up with the pace of technological change in other industries for several reasons.

• Most real estate companies have limited internal technical expertise, making internal development of new tools based on technology all but impossible.
• Heavy reliance on external data and service providers has failed to deliver meaningful changes to the industry. The focus on business growth and valuation puts emphasis on new business models built from off-the-shelf, unoriginal technology rather than on the kind of R&D that can build new capabilities.
• Sentiment from real estate companies is that the amount of unrealistic hype and claims about what technology can do has led to tremendously unrealistic expectations by real estate firms about the time, money, people, processes, and resources necessary to develop and integrate technology successfully.
• By some estimates, more than $100 billion has been invested in proptech, largely through venture capital firms and startups, but the feedback from many real estate firms is that the capabilities realized from this investment have thus far not been significant.

The Center fills this void by:

• Bringing advanced analytics development capabilities to real estate firms that do not have those capabilities in-house and acting as a quasi-external R&D group for the firm.
• Teaching employees to understand data and advanced AI applications, enabling them to vet external service providers better and tremendously increase success rates and efficacy of internal development projects.
• Providing recruitment access to Columbia Engineering graduate students who are some of the best in the world in cutting-edge AI and analytics skills.

The Center also plans to pursue a number of activities to significantly increase the real estate industry’s capabilities with data and technology. These include:

• Developing an open-source database with pre-processed data ready for machine learning algorithms. It often takes years to identify, collect, clean, and store data needed for AI/ML applications and advanced analytics. Our work with the industry has shown that companies are reluctant or unable to hire teams of data scientists to spend the time it takes to create the proper data set. Therefore, we plan to offer that data to firms so they can get more immediate value from their analytics activities.
• Designing a curriculum aimed at industry practitioners to significantly increase their technical skill sets in a short period of time.
• Hosting events that highlight cutting-edge research and approaches to technology development, something that currently does not exist in the industry.

In addition to our experienced internal leadership, the Center has already attracted leading real estate industry executives, technologists, and academics to serve on the real estate advisory board. Current board members include:

• MaryAnne Gilmartin – President and CEO of MAG Partners, LP and former CEO of both Forest City Ratner Companies and Mack-Cali Realty Corporation. Gilmartin led the development of the New York Times Building, Barclay’s Center, the Tata Innovation Center at Cornell Tech, New York by Gehry, and the tallest modular building in the world.
• Joint board seat of Canvas Property Group — Rob Morgenstern (CEO of Canvas with over 2,000 residential units under management), Al Tylis (former President and CEO of Northstar Asset Management), Josh Harris (Co-founder of Apollo Global Management
• Dr. David Magerman – formerly of Renaissance Technologies, the best performing quant hedge fund of all time, PhD in Computer Science with roles at Stanford Research Institute and IBM.
• Dr. Emanuel Derman – A legend in quantitative finance with a PhD in Theoretical Physics from Columbia. Derman worked at Bell Labs before joining Goldman Sachs and building their quantitative trading groups in equities and fixed income.
• Dr. Jacob Sagi – One of the leading real estate finance academics in the world at UNC- Chapel Hill with PhD’s in Financial Economics and Physics.
• Dr. Tim Savage – Real estate finance professor at NYU with experience at Charles River Associates and CBRE Econometric Advisors. PhD in Economics from UNC – Chapel Hill.

About the Center for AI in Business Analytics and FinTech

The Center for AI in Business Analytics and FinTech helps institutions and organizations leverage the immense resources within Columbia University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) to incubate ideas and develop innovative solutions to hard problems. The Center works on a wide array of concepts within the financial and tech industries and partners with many firms working on solutions for adversarial machine learning and interpretable architectures, explainability of AI architectures, anomaly detection, climate finance/risk, fraud detection/prevention, data-driven decision-making for asset management, and more.

In addition to working directly with financial and real estate firms, the Center works on initiatives that are fundamental to the financial and real estate industries, such as developing new quantitative models for understanding market cycles, timing, and risk. Our unique ability to combine deep financial experience with some of the best quantitative analysts in the world using artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, data mining, and data science allows us to pursue initiatives that can have a fundamentally transformative impact on the industry and firms.

Columbia Engineering

Since 1864, the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University has been a resource to the world for major advances in human progress. Today, Columbia Engineering is the leading engineering school in the Ivy League and New York City. As a nexus for high-impact research, the school convenes more than 250 faculty members and more than 6,000 undergraduate and graduate students from around the globe to push the frontiers of knowledge and solve humanity’s most pressing problems.

Contact
Josh Panknin
Director of Real Estate AI Research & Innovation
The Center for AI in Business Analytics and FinTech
Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science
Columbia University
Jcp2200@columbia.edu