Welcome to the newsletter!
Math Meets Money is an online publication at the intersection of physics, mathematics, business and finance. Our mission is to decode the complexities of the business world through the lens of physicist that likes to learn. By bridging the gap between these disciplines, we aim to empower scientific professionals to transition into operations and strategy roles across a host of business sectors.
If this sounds at all interesting subscribe below!
If you’re not yet convinced, read on!
Who am I? Why me?
I’m a Theoretical Physicist, whose academic research explores the high-energy behavior of particle physics and gravity. I received my PhD from Northwestern in 2024, after completing graduate Maths coursework at Cambridge, and undergraduate coursework in Physics and Maths at Cornell. I’ve held research fellowships at Stanford’s SLAC National Lab, and now at UCLA’s Bhaumik Institute starting in Fall 2024. Both professionally and recreationally, I aim to understand the world from first principles.
As a research scientist, I am an experienced public speaker that has been invited to give keynotes and seminars at some of the top physics institutions around the world, including CERN, ETH Zürich, Nordita, SLAC, and Argonne. I’m also an effective teacher that has delivered undergraduate- and graduate-level lectures to over 1000+ students throughout the course of my academic life. In doing so, I’ve created over 300+ pages of lecture notes on a variety of topics, with the aim of communicating complex topics clearly and concisely.
Given my background, I find myself well positioned to expose and demystify the complexities of the business world from first principles.
What is this? Why now?
This Substack originated from a void in the marketplace of ideas and information that I found while recruiting for industry roles. Shortly after I defended my PhD in Spring 2024, I was contacted by recruiters from quant finance roles (you can’t hide — they will find you).
Since then, I have observed that most of the material on the web that interfaces between industry and academia is either for business professionals to learn about science or for scientists to learn how to apply their technical skills in an industry setting.
But in the process of recruiting, I have found there was very little material out there for scientists to learn about business operations and strategy - until now!
Indeed, on many networking calls with quant traders, bankers, consultants, and fundamental investors, I heard terms, acronyms and business frameworks that I knew nothing about — and when I would ask for someone to define, say, back office vs. front office or buy-side vs. sell-side it was though I had just asked them what is the time derivative of velocity — I felt like an infant asking what color the sky was!
So this newsletter is aimed to fill this void - and I’m starting it now because I’m sufficiently far into the journey of mapping the business world through my personal lens as a physicist that the presentation won’t be completely misinformed.
Who is my intended audience?
This newsletter is for a community guided by a scientific ethic — from the university trained PhD to the amateur enthusiast — that is interested in learning about the business and finance world from first principles.
My primary goal is to use this platform to help those with scientific backgrounds leverage their skillsets, and overcome the barriers posed by a transition into industry careers.
Based on my experience these past six-months, I see 3 essential barriers to transitioning into industry from a scientific background.
Scientists are over-qualified - after all, scientists are so much more than just a programmer, lab tech or data analyst - they are creative problem solvers trained to discover and communicate new ideas! So if you want an industry role where you can continue to pursue creative problem solving, you should apply for jobs where your career can progress into an operations and strategy role. For many PhD-types, this is a huge turnoff, since these roles are oversaturated by MBA-types — DON’T LET THIS DISSUADE YOU. I promise, MBAs are cool (I know a few), and these roles will offer problems that demand creativity - so go get them! However, this won’t be easy, since most scientific recruiting pipelines are for technical roles; and sadly, to the untrained eye…
Scientists are under-qualified for these roles (generally speaking) - especially when compared to undergraduate applicants unburdened by the rules of the universe. Why is this so? Technical employees are revenue generators, and as a software engineer, quant trader, data analyst - your salary is an operating expense. This means that hiring teams will prioritize skills they’re willing to pay for (quick mental math, speedy programming) that you haven’t developed in a decade, and will undervalue the skills you’ve refined during your PhD (original thinking, team-building, and communication)! So to build on your experience as a scientist, don’t just be the business - create the business. To do this, you’ll need to overcome…
A Language Barrier - The business world, like any social ecosystem, has its own language — and if you want to convince people that your ideas are worth listening to, you need to speak their language! This can be hard coming from a scientific background where everything is very precisely defined, while much of the business lexicon seems like it’s all just vibes. I promise you though, there is method to the madness, and one of the primary goals of this newsletter is clarify the vibes!
These 3 barriers that I have personally experienced in the past year or so, have lead me to the following 3 core beliefs:
1. Innovation requires more than just innovative ideas—and the language used to scale ideas does not always align with the knowledge required to create them.
2. Technical people can do more than just technical jobs.
3. The business and science communities each have valuable heuristics for understanding the world from first principles—and they both have much to offer each other!
Grounded in these core beliefs, I hope that this newsletter can help you, the reader, overcome some of these barriers that might stand in your way!
What should you expect?
The plan is to post as often as possible, with briefer segments during the week, and long form posts on the weekends. These will include:
Monday - Friday: Daily Briefs on (1) terms, (2) acronyms and (3) frameworks commonly used in business a finance, along with my own personal heuristics on workflow and project management.
Saturday: Weekend Workshop on a case study from the world of management consulting, or studying an earnings report for fundamental analysis on a company’s financials. If Daily Briefs are Business 101, think of these as Industrial Finance 201.
Sunday: Value Vector will be a longer form post about something I learned during the week. Just as any good scientist has to be up to date on the arXiv preprint server, if you want break into the world of business and finance its important to stay in the loop. Topics will range from rate cuts (or hikes — but please, Jerome, no more hikes) at FOMC meetings, hottest news dominating the Fortune 500, market moving global events, and more!
In closing…
I became a scientist to innovate. Currently, it seems the best place to do that is in an industry environment where the market reigns supreme — in stark contrast to the administrative and bureaucratic glut that has captured academia and government labs.
So this newsletter is a public facing canvas for me to help decipher the world of business and finance to empower other scientists, learners and innovators like me looking to use the business world as a means for innovating.
I’m excited to see where it goes.
This is Math Meets Money.