NICOLA BRUTI LIBERATI PRIZE

The Bachelier Finance Society and the Department of Mathematics of the Politecnico di Milano, in cooperation with Springer, are proud to announce the Nicola Bruti Liberati Prize which is to be awarded annually for a doctoral thesis in all subjects of Mathematical Finance, such as, but not limited to: Derivative Pricing, Computational Finance, Econometrics and Statistical Methods applied to Finance, Risk Analysis, Portfolio Optimization, Probability Methods in Finance, and Numerical Methods in Finance.

Nicola obtained an undergraduate degree from Bocconi University (2001) in Mathematical Finance. He died in 2007 in a traffic accident in Sydney, while he was completing his PhD thesis at the University of Technology. At that time, he was also cooperating with the Quantitative Finance group of the Department of Mathematics of the Politecnico di Milano.

In order to commemorate Nicola, his family and the Department of Mathematics of the Politecnico di Milano offer an annual prize of €4.000 for the best doctoral thesis to be selected by a Committee appointed by the Bachelier Finance Society.

Theses defended in 2024 and 2025 must be submitted no later than January 30st, 2026.

Committee

For the 2025 edition the following people were in the committee:
Prof. Emilio Barucci – Politecnico di Milano
Prof. Carole Bernard – Grenoble Ecole de Management
Prof. Min Dai – The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Prof. Caroline Hillairet – ENSAE (chair)
Prof. Thaleia Zariphopoulou – University of Texas at Austin

Further Information

In suitable cases, the Prize Committee will express a recommendation for publication of the prize-winning thesis in a Springer series.

Please find more information and the application form on the website of the Politecnico (in Italian and English).

Winners of the Nicola Liberati Prize

The 2025 Bruti Liberati Prize has gone to Nathan De Carvalho, awarded for his thesis “Lifting Energy Markets: from Volatility Modeling to Optimal Trading”. His thesis was supervised by Profs. Eduardo Abi Jaber and Huyên
Pham. We would like to congratulate the winner warmly for his achievement.

The 2024 Bruti Liberati Prize has gone to Valentin Lou Tissot-Daguette, awarded for his thesis “Free Boundaries, Functional Expansions, and Occupied Processes”. His thesis was supervised by Prof. Mete Soner. We would like to congratulate the winner warmly for his achievement.

The 2023 Bruti Liberati Prize has gone to Ofelia Bonesini, awarded for her thesis “Four essays in between Probability Theory and Financial Mathematics”. Her thesis was supervised by Prof. Giorgia Callegaro. We would like to congratulate the winner warmly for her achievement.

The 2022 Bruti Liberati Prize has gone to Leandro Sánchez-Betancourt, awarded for his thesis “Uncertain Execution in Order-Driven Markets”. His thesis was supervised by Prof. Alvaro Cartea. We would like to congratulate the winner warmly for his achievement.

The 2021 Bruti Liberati Prize has gone to Johannes Wiesel, awarded for his thesis “Time-consistent data driven approach to robust pricing and hedging”. His thesis was supervised by Prof. Jan Obloj. We would like to congratulate the winner warmly for his achievement.

The 2020 Bruti Liberati Prize has gone to Daniel Bartl, awarded for his thesis “Robust techniques for utility maximization and related problems”. His thesis was supervised by Prof. Michael Kupper. We would like to congratulate the winner warmly for his achievement.

The 2019 Bruti Liberati Prize has gone to Dominykas Norgilas, awarded for his thesis “Techniques and Approaches for Pricing American Options”. His thesis was supervised by Prof. David Hobson and Prof. Saul Jacka. We would like to congratulate the winner warmly for his achievement.

The 2018 Bruti Liberati Prize has gone to Omar El Euch, awarded for his thesis “Quantitative Finance Under Rough Volatility”. We would like to congratulate the winner warmly for his achievement.

The 2017 Bruti Liberati Prize has gone to Roman Gayduk, University of Michigan, awarded for his thesis “Game-theoretic approach for modeling market microstructure”. We would like to congratulate the winner warmly for his achievement.

The 2016 Bruti Liberati Prize has gone ex-aequo to Gaoyue Guo, University of Oxford, awarded for his thesis “From Parametric to Robust: Generalized SVI Parametrization, Martingale Optimal Transport and Optimal Skorokhod Embedding” and Chi Seng Pun, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, awarded for his thesis “Robust Stochastic Control and High-Dimensional Statistics with Applications in Finance”.
We would like to congratulate the winners warmly for their achievement.

The 2015 Bruti Liberati Prize has gone to Marko Hans Weber, awarded for his thesis “Models of Dynamic Trading with Price Impact”. We would like to congratulate the winner warmly for his achievement.

The 2014 Bruti Liberati Prize for the best PhD in Mathematical Finance has been awarded to Thomas Kruse for his thesis “Inverse Optimal Stopping and Optimal Closure of Illiquid Positions”. Thomas studied for his PhD at the University of Bonn under the supervision of Prof. Stefan Ankirchner.
Thomas’s thesis covered inverse optimal stopping problems, and control problems motivated by issues in illiquidity. The prize committee was very impressed with both the financial and mathematical contributions of the thesis. We would like to congratulate the winner warmly for his achievement.

The 2013 Bruti Liberati Prize has gone to Dylan Possamaï, awarded for his thesis “A Journey through Second-Order BSDEs and other Contemporary Issues in Mathematical Finance”. We would like to congratulate the winner warmly for his achievement.

The 2012 Bruti Liberati Prize has gone to Martin Klimmek, awarded for his thesis “On inverse problems in mathematical finance”. We would like to congratulate the winner warmly for his achievement.

The 2011 Bruti Liberati Prize has gone to Johannes Muhle-Karbe, awarded for his thesis on “On Utility-Based Investment, Pricing and Hedging in Incomplete Markets”. We would like to congratulate the winner warmly for his achievement.