Master’s Thesis Competition

BNY Mellon supports and promotes talent from universities across Poland through its annual BNY Mellon Science Master’s Thesis Competition. Established in 2018 in collaboration with Hugo Steinhaus Centre, the competition invites students to submit their theses in the field of applied mathematics.

“We were pleased to see the submissions double in number and represent more universities than in prior years,” said Luette Kanas, Managing Director and Head of BNY Mellon Science and host of the 9 December 2020 online awards event. 

“The quality of the theses content was impressive, and several applicants applied scientific methods of mathematics in surprisingly ways.” 

Theses topics ranged widely, and included forecasting of electricity prices, use of emerging measures, and machine learning algorithms in marketing campaigns. 

The top three theses were chosen following by a judges panel comprised of academics and BNY Mellon representatives:  Prof.  Zbigniew Palmowski (Wroclaw University of Technology and Science), Prof. Rafał Weron (Wroclaw University of Technology and Science), Prof. Krzysztof Jajuga (University of Economics, Wroclaw) and Dr. Przemysław Klusik (University of Wrocław), Kamil Mizgier PhD (BNY Mellon), Kamil Tabiś PhD (BNY Mellon), and Michał Chrzanowski PhD (BNY Mellon). 

“The quality of the submissions is growing year on year,” said Prof. Krzysztof Jajuga. “I have been a judge in the Competition since its first edition, and I’m observing more diversity in the areas of research and more research directly focused on possible application of presented solutions.  We’ve seen an interesting mixture of research based on advanced stochastic approaches as well as the application of machine learning data analytics.”

Senthil Kumar, BNY Mellon Chief Risk Officer, recognized the competitors at the awards ceremony:

“Despite the unprecedented challenges our global community has faced in 2020, we saw an increased interest in our program from students across the country who presented inspiring ideas for the future. As we look ahead to 2021, we look forward to greater innovation and collaboration with more students and universities across Poland.” 

Authors of the top 3 theses will present their works at a dedicated event within the BNY Mellon Science Seminar series. The series is organized by BNY Mellon for Master and PhD students, alumni and lecturers, and seminars are hosted by business professionals who present on topics connecting theory with practical applicability. 

Winning theses of 2020

• Michał Stypułkowski (The University of Wroclaw, Mathematics and Information Science)  received 1st place and a 15,000 zł prize for his thesis, “Representing point clouds with generative conditional invertible Flow Networks” 

• Mateusz Golatowski (Warsaw University of Technology¸ Mathematics and Information Science) received 2nd place and a 10,000 zł prize for his thesis, “Inflation market models” 

• Tomasz Serafin (Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Pure and Applied Mathematics) received 3rd place a 5,000 zł prize for his thesis, “Ensemble forecasting of Intraday electricity prices” 

If you would like to take part in the 2021 edition of the Master’s Thesis Competition, follow BNY Mellon on social media and visit our website regularly to stay informed.