Andrew Lo

External Professor




Andrew W. Lo is the Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, the director of MIT’s Laboratory for Financial Engineering, a principal investigator at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He received a B.A. in economics from Yale University in 1980, and an A.M. and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 1984.
His most recent research focuses on systemic risk in the financial system; evolutionary approaches to investor behavior, bounded rationality, and financial regulation; and applying financial engineering and data science to develop new funding models for biomedical innovation.

Lo has published extensively in academic journals (see https://alo.mit.edu) and his most recent book is Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought.  His awards include Batterymarch, Guggenheim, and Sloan Fellowships; the Paul A. Samuelson Award; the Eugene Fama Prize; the IAFE-SunGard Financial Engineer of the Year; the Global Association of Risk Professionals Risk Manager of the Year; the Harry M. Markowitz Award; the Managed Futures Pinnacle Achievement Award; one of TIME’s “100 most influential people in the world”; and awards for teaching excellence from both Wharton and MIT. His book Adaptive Markets has also received a number of awards. He is a Fellow of Academia Sinica, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, and the Society of Financial Econometrics.

Lo is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a member of the Board of Overseers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a board member of BridgeBio Pharma and Roivant Sciences, and an advisory board member of NIH/NCATS.


Primary Institution: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Role/Title: Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor

Topics of Interest: Agent-based Modeling - Anthropology/Archaeology - AI/Machine Learning - Behavior - Biology - Economics - Engineering - Environment/Climate Change - Evolution - Finance - Intelligence - Law/Policy - Mathematics/Computer Science - Network Theory - Neuroscience - Organizations - Physics - Psychology - Risk & Uncertainty - Scaling - Science of Science - Social Media - Social Science - Strategy/Decision Making - Technology/Innovation

How SFI changes your mind: Once you understand that we live in a complex adaptive system, everything looks different from that point forward. SFI is the red pill.

When and how you first got involved with SFI: Attended conferences many years ago organized by Brian Arthur and Blake LeBaron.

Favorite Book: Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Favorite Film: A.I.