Hanlon FSC Newsletter Spring 2026
As the semester reaches the halfway point, we are excited to share the latest events and highlights from the Hanlon Lab! Ranging from our annual Trading Competition to our High School Enrichment Program, the Lab has been busy serving the Stevens & local community!
Stevens High Frequency Trading Competition 2026
Stevens, the Hanlon Lab, and the SHIFT team are excited and getting ready to host the Annual Trading Competition, with the Orientation happening March 4th, and the Competition officially starting March 6th.
The team was excited to see 107 team applications, containing 328 students. 89 universities are being represented across the globe, spanning 15+ countries! After technical testing, the total number of participating teams is 59. Stay tuned for weekly updates of the competition on our website, and our LinkedIn. We look forward to seeing who takes home the grand prize of $2000.
Alumni Interview Series
Check out our latest Alumni Talks interview with Dr. Sebastian Tudor, who currently works as a VP at JP Morgan on their Credit Algo Trading team. Stay tuned for more conversations with our accomplished lab alumni.
Where Traditional Markets Meet DeFi: Inside the Future of Trading at Hanlon Lab
At the Hanlon Financial Systems Lab, research is pushing beyond traditional market boundaries to explore the convergence of centralized and decentralized finance. A recent initiative extends the lab’s SHIFT high-frequency trading simulator into a hybrid environment where NASDAQ-style order books operate alongside blockchain-based markets. By integrating tokenized assets, smart contracts, and decentralized exchange protocols into a single simulation framework, researchers are able to study price discovery, arbitrage, and market behavior across both systems simultaneously.
This work reflects a broader shift in financial markets, where the distinction between traditional finance and DeFi is rapidly fading. Through this unified platform, students and researchers at Stevens are gaining hands-on experience with the full market ecosystem—developing trading strategies, testing them under realistic conditions, and analyzing how next-generation financial infrastructure will evolve.
Stay tuned for more research coming from the Hanlon Lab this year!
Syllabi
Course syllabi have been updated for the Spring 2026 semester to reflect changes in coursework and faculty.
New Theses, Dissertations, and Capstone Projects
Each semester, the lab publishes master’s capstone projects and theses, along with new PhD dissertations. These latest additions can be viewed here.
Get Featured in Our Upcoming Newsletter
For submission of news or event information to be featured in our upcoming newsletter, please reach out to us at fscadmin@stevens.edu
Hanlon Financial Systems Center | Stevens Institute of Technology
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