The Center for Computational Finance and Economic Systems (CoFES) at Rice University and investment management firm Jain Global are launching a new externship program designed to give undergraduate and graduate students practical experience and project opportunities.
The program, led by Rice alumnus Maxwell Lee, portfolio manager at Jain Global’s commodities division in Houston, TX, will involve students in projects in quantitative finance and risk analytics in power, gas, and cross-commodity trading. The students will receive three hours of credit through STAT 492 Statistics Practicum or STAT 540 Practicum in Statistics or Data Science/Internship in Statistical Modeling.
Jain Global, headquartered in New York City, is the second largest hedge fund launch in history upon its debut on 1 July 2024 with $5.3 billion in capital.
Three students have been selected for the inaugural CoFES-Jain 2025 spring externship.
- Jack Guan, a sophomore double majoring in Statistics and in Operations Research with a minor in Financial Computation and Modeling;
- Jackson Thetford, a second-year graduate student in the Professional Master of Engineering Management and Leadership program;
- Amanda Xu is a first-year doctoral student in Statistics.
“Through this program, we have a unique opportunity to partner with Rice University to advance CoFES programs in education and research and help prepare students for career success,” said Lee, who is also an adjunct professor of the practice of statistics at Rice and a member of the CoFES External Advisory Board.
For over two decades, CoFES has collaborated with many academic and industry partners to develop prominent research pipelines and provide students with simulated training environments, internship opportunities, and real-world projects where they can apply their computational, statistical and mathematical techniques to understand the health of an economy and its market environments.
- Shawn Hutchins, Communications and Marketing Specialist
