NUS Computer Science Student Wins Singapore Leg of International Quant Championship, Heads to Global Finals in October

Sean Jean (Year 4, Computer Science) has won the Singapore National Finals of the International Quant Championship (IQC), organised by WorldQuant. He will represent Singapore at the Global Finals on 6-7 October, competing against champions from 12 other countries. 

Sean entered IQC this year after coming across it through a high school friend and later through Associate Professor Steven Halim’s CS3233 Competitive Programming course, which introduced him to quantitative finance. He submitted two alphas – trading signals or strategies used to predict market movements and generate returns – for the first stage during a break from his summer internship, without expecting to advance, and eventually qualified for stage two ranked outside the top 10,000. 

With 10 days left before the deadline, he built an automation pipeline that generates trading alphas using large language models and reinforcement learning, drawing on coursework from NUS’ AI-focused modules – CS3263, CS3264, and CS4248. His ranking rose to first place by the final presentation round, where placement was based on both score and presentation. 

IQC is a team-based competition, with teams of up to four members. Sean competed alone, under the name Sharpe Mind.

He is now refining his pipeline ahead of the Global Finals, drawing on conversations with WorldQuant researchers and other teams from the presentation round.