Physicsworld.com | April 17, 2026
In a recent feature on Physics World, read about MIT PhD alum (Mathematics) Lyubo Panchev, a quantitative researcher at Susquehanna, and how his academic background and career path has led to his current quantitative finance role.
Excerpt:
Quantitative trading plays an ever-increasing role in global financial markets. Automated algorithms analyze millions of financial instruments simultaneously, while mathematical models anticipate price movements on nanosecond timescales.
Susquehanna is a proprietary trading firm, meaning it invests its own capital in the markets. Susquehanna’s quantitative researchers—or “quants”—collaborate with traders and technologists to drive the company’s success. Quants design and implement the complex models and algorithms the firm needs to make rapid, well-informed pricing and trading decisions.
The quant advantage
Lyubo Panchev, a quant at Susquehanna with seven years at the firm, describes how quants collaborate across a wide range of instruments and problem types. “Our quants are all trying to mathematically understand the world and the financial markets,” he says, “and then we use that information to determine whether we want to make a trade or not.” While the challenges vary considerably across the firm’s different trading desks, that shared mathematical mission is what unites them.
Read the full piece published on physicsworld.com
