Andrew Lo

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.

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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.