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Before landing on Wall Street as a financial engineer, WorldQuant University instructor Greg Ciresi dreamed of becoming a medical doctor. He can pinpoint the precise moment his career aspirations changed.

Greg was a pre-med student at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, near his childhood home in New York. During an organic chemistry course his freshman year, he discovered a distaste for rote memorization. Greg prefers data visualization and comprehension.

“I always liked to find patterns,” he says, “whether it was in puzzles or any type of chart that could explain information visually or quantitatively.”

Growing up, Greg even studied the graphics that U.S. statistician Edward Tufte popularized in his groundbreaking book, “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.” Greg loved the details in the drawings, especially a flow map showing Napoleon’s 1812 march.

Organic chemistry had none of this. Greg liked the storytelling aspects of physics, so he switched majors.

“I like that physics had a limited number of formulas that could describe so many things,” he says. “There was an elegance and beauty in the compactness of the mathematical representation into how so many things worked in the world.”

This passion led to a career in quantitative finance. After finishing his physics degree, Greg earned follow-up degrees in biomedical engineering at Rutgers University and statistics at Texas A&M University. He then capped his formal schooling with a Master of Science in Applied Mathematics at New York University.

“I enjoy the intersection of disciplines,” Greg says. “And financial engineering in particular is intriguing because it combines mathematics, statistics, and computer science with a specific application in finance.”

Greg also enjoys teaching. After working as a quant at Millennium Management and Cantor Fitzgerald on Wall Street, he shifted to higher education. Today he serves as an instructor and curriculum engineer at WorldQuant University, an institution that attracted him through its social mission.

“WorldQuant University has removed the friction of cost,” Greg says. “We offer our education at no cost, and we make the education very relevant in a dynamic marketplace.”

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