Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Mary Coughlan T.D., has today announced the establishment of a new SFI Strategic Research Cluster – the Financial Mathematics and Computation Cluster (FMC2) involving a Government investment of over €4million.

Prof Gregory Connor from the Economics Dept at NUI Maynooth has joined with Prof Anthony Brabazon (UCD), Prof John Cotter (UCD), Dr. David Edelman (UCD), Prof. Paolo Guasoni (DCU) and Dr. Michael O’Neill (UCD) to set up The Financial Mathematics Computation Cluster.

FMC2 is a research collaboration between Industry and academia which will create a globally-leading centre of financial research to provide a critical underpinning for the future development of, and employment growth in, the international financial services sector in Ireland. Industry partners involved with FMC2 so far are Pioneer Investments, Ryan Capital Ltd and The Institute of Bankers in Ireland.

Announcing the funding and emphaising the strategic importance of FMC2 the Tánaiste said “The IFSC currently generates approximately €22 billion in services exports annually. The International Financial Services Centre has been an outstanding success story in the Irish economy over the last 20 years, employing in excess of 25,000 people and generating 35% of our service exports.

Today, the establishment of the FMC2 SFI Strategic Research Cluster further builds on this and dispels any notion that scientific research and investment is primarily theoretical and somewhat removed from the day-to-day economic activity of our country. Global events of the past 18 months have shown us just how interconnected different sectors of our society really are in an economic content. Such interdependency highlights the need for diverse disciplines to converge and work in unison towards recovery. This new SFI Strategic Research Cluster does just that, as it brings together complementary expertise in financial mathematics, financial economics and computer science to create a multi-disciplinary research centre.”

14th October 2009