Mark Begun

Biography

MEng Concentration: Financial Engineering
Anticipated Graduation Date: December 2016
Areas of Interest: Trading, Quantitative Research, Portfolio Management

Mark received his bachelor’s degree in Operations Research and Information Engineering from Cornell University. He is currently a Samuel Dell Masters of Engineering fellow while attending Cornell for his Masters. In addition to his engineering curriculum, Mark opted to take a number of challenging courses involving decision theory, financial statement analysis, and econometrics.

In the past, Mark was involved in Cornell’s prestigious Mutual Investment Club, which manages a portfolio of securities valued over $50,000. In January 2013, as an analyst in the Consumer Goods sector, he successfully pitched Activision Blizzard, which to this date has yielded a return of 135%. Mark was also a part of Cornell’s emerging Quantitative Finance team, which seeks to write automated trading strategies in Python using an IDE called Quantopian.

While interning in the Quantitative Strategies Group at the Royal Bank of Canada in the summer of 2016, Mark researched, developed, and backtested several trading strategies based on arbitrage opportunities in the create and redeem baskets of ETFs. He also built a model that predicts end of day bond price marks to be used by traders on a fixed income desk. Previously, during two summers spent at MetLife Financial Group of New York, Mark researched mutual funds, built spreadsheet models to increase advisor productivity, and was also responsible for preparing presentations and marketing tools for high net-worth clients.

As a student with strong leadership and communication skills, Mark is currently the co-chair of the Cornell Masters of Engineering Student Leadership Committee, which plans extra-curricular activities for ORIE masters candidates. He was also selected to be a Teaching Assistant for Engineering Probability and Statistics II in the fall and Spreadsheet Based Modeling and Data Analysis in the spring. He received the Teaching Assistant of the Year Award in the Operations Research Department for 2016.

Mark is interested in careers in trading, quantitative research, asset management, and risk management. He hopes to use his computational skills, innovative mindset, and strong communication and teamwork abilities to build a successful career in finance.