Manuela Veloso thinks differently than your average Wall Street executive — and it shows in the composition of the team she's actively building out.
When Veloso went on leave from her post as the head of Carnegie Mellon University's machine learning department in 2018, she chose JPMorgan as her new office. She was enticed by the challenge of bringing AI to a company that wasn't digital-first or digital-born.
Since then, Veloso has assembled a team of nearly 60 experts — most of whom have PhDs — spanning computer science, machine learning, cryptography, mathematics, and electrical engineering. About 45 team members have come directly from academia, either graduates or faculty members, and the remaining previously worked in technology or data science in financial services.
Her team is growing, with seven open positions from research associate up to executive director and vice president. And as Veloso builds out her team, there's another avenue she's eyeing — over banks, unicorn fintechs, and Big Tech — as the labor shortage continues to strain recruitment and retention on Wall Street.
"One of my missions is bringing JPMorgan branding to academics," Veloso told Insider. "The more we delve into the world of academics, the better access to talent we may have."
Veloso also offers 12 PhD fellowships annually, with the current fellows hailing from Cornell University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Oxford, to name a few. She also has 40 research collaborations, which bring together university faculty and JPMorgan technologists to advance AI research and applications. Veloso frequently gives keynote talks at academic and AI- and machine learning-focused venues, not just those directed at AI and finance.
It's likely to be an easier sell for Veloso than most others. She has a deep academic background and experience leading and participating in renowned AI, robotics, and computing machinery forums, which has garnered her the reputation as an international expert in AI and robotics. She's even been featured in a deck of cards (on the six of hearts) celebrating notable women in computing.
"One of my goals is to have people, when they study AI and machine learning and computer science, that they add to their pool of options JPMorgan," Veloso said. "So that we get not only the MBAs, which will be needed for the business of course, but for the AI part, we want people, instead of going to mainly tech companies, to come to us with those types of skills."
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