Fit for Artificial Intelligence in Asset Management

Markus Schmid is Full Professor of Corporate Finance at the University of St.Gallen, Academic Director of the FSI-HSG, member of the School of Finance and Managing Director of the Swiss Institute of Banking and Finance (SBF-HSG). He is also a Faculty Member of the Swiss Finance Institute (SFI) and Research Member of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) in Brussels. He studied economics, specialising in corporate finance, financial market theory and international economic relations at the University of Basel, where he also completed his doctorate in 2004 with a dissertation on executive compensation and corporate governance.

Lukas Gonon has been Assistant Professor in Artificial Intelligence in Finance at the Center for Financial Services Innovation (FSI-HSG) and the School of Computer Science (SCS-HSG) at the University of St.Gallen (HSG) since 1 November 2024. His research focuses on deep learning and quantitative finance. His work centres on questions related to the development and analysis of machine learning algorithms, in particular for time series and derivatives pricing and hedging. Lukas has previously worked as a research associate at ETH Zurich, as a postdoc at the University of St.Gallen, as an assistant professor at LMU Munich and as a senior lecturer at Imperial College London. He is an Honorary Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London and has worked for Sony and J.P. Morgan, among others.

Nikolas is a member of the Investment Solutions team. He holds a Master of Arts in Banking & Finance from the University of Zurich, with a specialization in quantitative modeling and data science. During his studies, he worked as a working student in Cyber Security Advisory at IBM and as a research assistant at two chairs of the University of Zurich (Economics and Financial Economics).

Christian is Head of Innovation and Research at Finreon. Previously, he worked at Kraus Partner Investment Solutions as a project manager in Global Tactical Asset Allocation and at Vescore (formerly 1741 Asset Management) as a quantitative developer in indexing (smart beta). He also gained professional experience in quantitative strategies and research at Notenstein Privatbank and in investment risk at Credit Suisse. Christian holds a PhD in Finance from the University of St.Gallen, with a research focus on filtering methods. He also holds a Master of Arts in Banking and Finance and a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration from the University of St.Gallen. His master’s thesis received the Credit Suisse Award for the best master’s thesis of his graduating class.

John is a Partner at EY in Zurich, responsible for AI, Innovation and Alliances in Financial Services across Europe West. He brings more than 20 years of experience in technology-enabled business trans-formation, strategy and cultural change in the financial services industry. Before rejoining EY in 2026, he was Managing Director and Senior Advisor at Julius Baer and, before that, Director in Wealth Management at Deutsche Bank in Zurich. From 2014 to 2019, he was Director in EY’s Financial Services Advisory practice in London. Earlier in his career, he held client-facing and consulting roles at Pivotal Labs, Information Management Group, EMC Consulting, and Detica. From 2024 to 2026, he served on the Conference Board of Business Agility Day. John holds a BSc in Software Engineering from the University of Hull.

Eugenio is an active Angel Investor and also a Director and Portfolio Manager at Vontobel. Previously, he was a researcher at the University of Lausanne, working on factor risk premia, stock return predictability and the pricing of climate change risks. He holds a PhD in Finance from the Swiss Finance Institute and the University of Lausanne, a Master’s degree in Finance from Bocconi University and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of Catania.

Emanuele is a postdoctoral researcher at the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) in Lugano and the Department of Wealth Creation, Lake Lucerne Institute (LLUI), Switzerland. His areas of expertise include machine learning, financial markets, market microstructure, and data science. He holds a Bachelor in Physics and a Master in Quantitative Finance from the University of Milan and PhD in Finance from the University of Neuchâtel. From 2018 to 2025, he was a partner at Algo Finance Sagl in Lugano, where he was responsible for IT infrastructure, data acquisition and algorithmic portfolio generation.

Matthias heads Analytics & Quantitative Modelling (AQM) in Investment Solutions at UBS Asset Man-agement and is the global lead for sentiment analytics at UBS Group. He also lectures at the Departments of Finance of the University of Zurich and the University of St.Gallen, as well as at the Swiss Finance Institute. Previously, he was Chief Investment Officer at FLYNT Bank AG and held various roles in the CIO Office at UBS Wealth Management, at UBS Investment Bank, at Deutsche Bank and at the KOF Swiss Economic Institute of ETH Zurich. He obtained a Masters degree from the University of Oxford, a PhD in Applied Macroeconomics from ETH Zurich, and completed a Habilitation in Behavioral Finance at the University of Zurich.

Gianluca is the Head of Systematic Strategies at Zürcher Kantonalbank (ZKB Asset Management / Swisscanto) and a Professor of Practice in Quantitative Finance and Systematic Investing at the University of Liechtenstein. In addition, he is affiliated with the Department of Economics at the University of Zurich and serves as a Lecturer in Empirical Finance at the Department of Finance as well as at the Hochschule für Wirtschaft Zürich (HWZ). Previous roles include: Research Fellow at the New York University Stern Volatility and Risk Institute, Postdoctoral Researcher at Yale University, Visiting Researcher at Copenhagen Business School, and Head of Quantitative Research at OLZ AG.