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Pursuing an advanced degree is about more than professional advancement for Oksana Kolisnyk, a WorldQuant University learner in Ukraine.

“Living in Kiev means that war is present in routines as well as in long-term decisions,” says Kolisnyk, who must navigate regular air raid alerts, occasional power and water disruptions, and the background strain of uncertainty. “Education has become my anchor.”

This uncertainty influenced Oksana’s decision to pursue the Master of Science in Financial Engineering at WorldQuant University. She enrolled in 2026 and is scheduled to graduate in 2028. She says she enrolled in the accredited, free, online program for the rigor, but also for the flexibility as she weighs the possibility of relocating to a safer place.

“Wherever I am physically located, I can keep learning, working, and moving toward the future rather than placing my development on hold,” she says.

Oksana discovered WorldQuant University while researching AI-assisted education and engaging with professional communities in data science and quantitative finance. She was seeking a degree that could deepen her technical abilities rather than simply provide a credential.

Her professional journey began in economics and entrepreneurship before expanding into marketing, technology and the startup ecosystem. Overall, she has completed more than 120 certificates in business, marketing, and technology. Now she is focusing on data engineering and analytics, including open-source intelligence research and using data to investigate social problems.

Oksana sees financial engineering as a bridge between those interests and the quantitative skills needed to work with financial markets, risk, and decision-making.
She is particularly interested in the practical application of what she learns.

“I learn best when theory becomes a model, a pipeline, a decision, or a product that can be tested in the real world,” Oksana says.

Her goal is to bring together business knowledge, technical systems, and quantitative finance to fill market gaps.

“I genuinely love turning numbers into stories, and ideas into useful products,” she says.