Master’s Thesis Competition

Master Thesis Competition

In 2018, BNY Mellon Science held the inaugural Master Thesis competition based upon financial services for students of Applied Mathematics. Students from universities across Poland were invited to take part.

The 2019 competition will be open to Master’s students at Polish Universities who graduated in 2018 or will graduate in 2019. Applications should be submitted until 15^th September 2019 in English or, if in Polish, must be accompanied by a full English translation. The top three finalists will be announced during a special ceremony by the end of 2019. Bookmark this page to check for updates on the submission process.

Competition Prizes

• 1st place: 15,000 PLN
• 2nd place: 10,000 PLN
• 3rd place: 5,000 PLN

How to Submit Your Thesis

The rules of the competition and instructions for how to submit your Master's Thesis are accessible from the related content section. All information provided on this website is subject to such rules.
If you have any questions about the competition please contact us at:
polandcompetition@bnymellon.com

Meet the 2018 Winners

Pictured left to right are: Jury member - Dr. Kamil Tabis from the Quantitative Analysis team at BNY Mellon Wroclaw, Weronika Białecka, Jonas Al-Hadad, Joanna Kuprowska

• First place – Jonas Al-Hadad – ‘Pricing of American Options’
  Summary of thesis: According to the Martingale Pricing Theory, the price of a perpetual American put option is equivalent to identifying a value function that solves the optimal stopping problem. The goal of Jonas’ thesis was to determine the optimal valuation method for the perpetual American put option with negative interest rates.
• Second place – Weronika Białecka – ‘Application of Weighted Distributions to modelling Operational Risk’
  Summary of thesis: Weronika’s thesis further investigated the use of weighted distributions to model operational risk. The analysis was supported with the calculation of other risk measures (i.e., value at risk and expected shortfall).
• Third place – Joanna Kuprowska – ‘Comparison of different models of Credit Scoring’
  Summary of thesis: The main goal of Joanna’s thesis was to compare the different machine learning models of credit scoring and focus on identifying the best one in terms of default prediction.

2018 Judging Recap

For the 2018 competition, students were asked to submit a thesis, which was reviewed by a judging panel made up of BNY Mellon representatives, including Dr. Heng Sun, Head of the Counterparty Risk Modelling team; Dr. Kamil Tabis from the Quantitative Analysis team at BNY Mellon, Wroclaw. They were joined by professors from the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, and the University of Economics, Wroclaw.

Thanks to The Hugo Steinhaus Centre, acting on behalf of the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, for their contributions to the success of the inaugural competition.

About BNY Mellon Science

BNY Mellon Science represents the strategic centre of excellence for quantitative and analytical work focused on risk management across BNY Mellon globally, delivering valuable insight and risk quantification across the firm. BNY Mellon Science comprises a motivated and engaged team of professionals with expertise in financial industry practices and regulation. The team works closely with colleagues across BNY Mellon to support modelling and data analytics for the firm’s capital adequacy, market risk and enterprise risk activities, alongside quantitative support for the annual Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR) Stress Test.