Christopher Nguyen

MMath, 2018

Three words to describe your time at Warwick

Memorable, enjoyable, challenging.

Career aspirations

I envisage tackling even harder and more interesting problems in industry as tools such as generative AI and traditional machine learning trivialise older problems for more people, and create novel difficult problems. The industrial benchmark for high performance is always climbing, and meeting it means utilising all tools at your disposal to get the mathematical edge.

Software Engineer at G Research

To what extent did you plan your career?

I started to think about my future career during my penultimate and final years, and knew that I wanted to apply my mathematical skills to tackle interesting problems in industry. The MA4K8 Maths-in-Action Project and Warwick Careers team gave a taster of these with many applied uses of mathematics in the outside world and were ultimately very helpful in guiding me into my current high tech mathematical finance career.

How do you use your Maths degree in your job?

High tech mathematical finance is frequently a good blend of analysis, algebra, and unknown market conditions. Being able to think deeply about unfamiliar problems and form testable conjectures with an analytical mindset already puts you ahead of most market participants. To get into the top percentiles of market performers, you need to be keen to experiment with new academic and industrial research methods.

Why did you choose to study Maths at Warwick?

At GCSE and A-Level, Maths was by far my favourite subject, so choosing to study maths at university was a natural choice. I wanted a university which had a fast pace, a broad range of choices, and offered the flexibility to either stay in academia or transition into industry. Warwick excels at all of these, so was my top university choice.

Which modules did you particularly enjoy/find useful?

Mathematically, I really enjoyed MA3H6 (Algebraic Topology) and MA4H4 (Geometric Group Theory) - these modules have turned me into a lifelong enjoyer of topology and its applications. For the finance and software industry, I still find MA131 (Analysis I and II) and MA251 (Algebra 1: Advanced Linear Algebra) to be very applicable - if you're able to model an industrial problem as an analytical or algebraic one, then these modules provide a rich toolkit to be utilised.

What core skills do you think you developed during your time at Warwick?

An analytical mind, problem solving, and the ability to embrace unfamiliarity. You pick up some of these skills at A-Level, but Warwick really accelerates and cultivates the development of these over the maths degree.