Are you ready to update your AI skills? Start our applied Deep Learning Fundamentals Lab for practitioners today!
Image
History and Mission
WQU was founded in 2015 with a bold mission: make advanced, quality education accessible to learners worldwide, free of cost.
Image
Our Founder, Igor Tulchinsky
After serving over 12 years as a portfolio manager and holding over 20 jobs from scientist to video game programmer, Igor Tulchinsky founded WorldQuant, LLC, a quantitative investment firm. Igor knew that the exponential growth of data would ultimately change the way the world invests, learns, and works. In his search to find and develop talent for the quantitative finance industry, a passion for creating education opportunities worldwide was sparked. Igor believed that people worldwide deserve access to quality education and premier resources to work with experts in the field. The result was WorldQuant University, offering the first completely free Master of Science in Financial Engineering.
Bringing Opportunity to Talent
Early WorldQuant University students were more than learners. They were partners in an experiment with a bold mission: Make advanced, quality education accessible to capable learners everywhere, free of cost.
“They were the pioneers,” says Daphne Kis, the university’s CEO from 2016 to 2023. “People were incredibly enthusiastic about giving feedback and participating.”
She says the same spirit of collaboration continues at WQU. “It’s a tremendous differentiator that the university has, which is that it’s not a one-way street,” she says. “It’s a collaboration over time as we innovate, offer new products, and see what the demand in the market is.”
Since 2015, this experiment has grown from a startup to a global educational provider. WQU had 890 students in 2017. Less than 10 years later, the university reached more than 30,000 learners in over 150 countries. A turning point came in 2021, when WQU received accreditation from the Distance Education Accrediting Commission (DEAC). New academic offerings quickly followed.
Despite the pace of change, Kis says one thing has remained constant: “Our goal has always been to bring opportunity to the talent.”
Video file
Our Mission
We make advanced, high-quality education accessible to learners worldwide, free of cost.
Questions?
Our offerings are designed to help students build high-demand quantitative and advanced technical skills in financial engineering and data sciences. Discover the best fit for you.