Professor Pedro Domingos will lead the new D.E. Shaw Machine Learning Group. The D. E. Shaw Group is a global investment and technology development firm with more than $50 billion in investment capital and offices in North America, Europe and Asia.

The new Machine Learning Research Group will operate in parallel to the firm’s longstanding machine learning efforts. According to Randall Whitestone, D. E. Shaw Group spokesman, the team led by professor Pedro Domingos “will use an academic research approach”.

Pedro Domingos is professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington and a leading authority on machine learning as well as an opinion leader on the issues surrounding it. He is the author of “The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World”, a best-selling book on machine learning.

It seems clear that AI will play an increasingly important role in driving change in the financial services companies. Besides professor Pedro Domingos, also professor Manuela Veloso (Técnico alumna) joined J. P. Morgan as the head of Artificial Intelligence and the machine learning expert Charles Elkan joined Goldman Sachs.