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Vital Stats
Hometown: Bangalore
Master's Program: University of California at Berkeley (Haas School of Business), Master in Financial Engineering
Additional Graduate Work: Master of Science in computer engineering from the University of Southern California
Undergraduate Degree: Bachelor of Technology in electronics and communications from the India Institute of Technology at Madras, India
Honors: I'm currently in the top 20 percent of the class.
Internships: I will be doing an internship at Standard & Poor's in New York in October.
Mentor: I don't have a direct mentor, but a few years ago I read a lot of books on economics. The book "Fortune's Formula," by William Poundstone, which goes into detail about financial engineering and talks about the first financial engineers, got me interested in this. So the book became a mentor, of sorts.
Q&A
AT: Why did you choose to pursue a master's degree in finance, and why did you choose the University of California at Berkeley's program?
Bhutani: When I was working in electronic design automation, I was good at coming up with models. I was working to program and develop mathematical models for electrical engineering. I realized I wanted to contribute on a more complete level and decided on a master's program. The main reason I chose the Berkeley program was the very strong faculty - everyone is a leader in their fields. It's a top program and very exciting.
AT: What is your math background? Do you have any prior programming experience?
Bhutani: In math, I have an undergraduate degree from the India Institute of Technology at Madras in electrical engineering, which gave me exposure to a large number of applied math techniques, such as signal processing, Laplace transform-based analysis techniques and numerical analysis. Then I had the opportunity to build on this when I was working in the electronic design automation (EDA) industry, where my primary responsibility was in mathematical modeling of circuits....