On June 17- 21, the Becker Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago (BFI) and the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering hosted the Macro Financial Modeling Summer Session for Young Scholars. For the third year, the camp brought together the next generation of economists and industry leaders to learn, discuss, collaborate, and find connections between macroeconomics and finance. Together, the “campers” explored the frontiers of this essential work, and provoked many stimulating discussions and new ideas.

Basic biomedical research may be in its most fruitful period in history: each year, with new technologies helping scientists advance our understandings of the underlying basis of human disease. At the same time, it’s increasingly difficult to undertake the process of translating promising biomedical discoveries into new drugs or diagnostics, especially those that will help relatively small numbers of people. “The problem rests not in the science,” says Whitehead Institute Founding Member Harvey Lodish, “but with the lack of funding for early-stage development.”

Alpha is the long-established measure of investment performance. But Andrew Lo has come up with a new twist on the metric.

He calls it dynamic alpha, and it tells you over what time horizon an individual investor or trading model does best.

Lo, who is an academic and investor, believes quant managers could use the measure to mould strategies to trade at the most effective frequency. Pension funds and insurers could use it to ensure diversification across investment styles.

Andrew Lo, a professor of finance at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, dialled in from Boston to talk about regulation, markets and the future of machine learning.

Lo pioneered the adaptive markets hypothesis, which describes markets as a complex evolutionary ecosystem, populated by different stakeholders that adapt to changes on the basis of certain behavioural traits and biases.

There's big money in biotech in the Greater Boston area. Last year, venture capital firms invested more than $3 billion in the state's biotech and pharmaceutical companies, according to the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council. The amount has risen every year since 2012. Local companies have already produced revolutionary treatments for rare diseases, cancer and more. And there's promise and hope for cures and treatments still to come. Because of that, there's no shortage of capital.Biotech companies often go public even if they haven't yet put a product on the market, let alone turned a profit. MIT finance professor Andrew Lo says there's good reason for so much exuberance.

Opinion article by Andrew W. Lo and Kenneth Kosik on the potential role of California in the space of Alzheimer's Disease research.

“Nobody’s talking about this story,” Max Tokarsky said. Not exactly true, as the founder and CEO of InvestAcure is telling anyone who will listen. A former non-profit executive-turned-evangelist for the Impact Investment and Public Benefit Corporation model, Tokarsky is slated to present the keynote address at the Alzheimer's-2018 International Conference in Rome, Italy May 8. The Rome conference brings together researchers from around the world focused on groundbreaking research to slow, reverse or prevent dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. A life-long social entrepreneur and former non-profit executive, Tokarsky will present "The Enigma of Eroom’s Law and The Wall Street Math Stifling Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery" in Rome. He wants to talk about funding a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. But he’s not talking about just asking major corporations or the government or even Big Pharma for help. Tokarsky wants everyone to pitch in. And he’s figured out a way we can.

Buying a stock is one thing, but when do you sell? That question will have been nagging many nervous investors in recent months, after watching global stock markets tumble. One potential solution is to use stop-loss orders that ensure you exit your position when the price falls below a designated point. Do stop-loss orders work? Can they help investors sleep better at night by cutting back on risk? Or are stops a trader’s tool, best left to those who nip in and out of markets rather than investors with multiyear horizons?

Economist Andrew Lo talks to the FT's John Authers about his adaptive markets hypothesis, the idea that markets develop and adapt over time and should be modelled using concepts from biology instead of physics. It's the subject of his recent book, Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought.

Companies are going public without revenues and the stock market is jittery. It feels like we’ve been here before, but there are some important differences.

Andrew W. Lo, director of the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering and the Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor at MIT, describes his research on artificial intelligence and financial markets at the launch event for the MIT Intelligence Quest, an Institute-wide initiative on human and machine intelligence research, its applications, and its bearing on society.

Their mission is to develop principled, innovative leaders who improve the world and to generate ideas that advance management practice.

Derek Lowe's commentary on drug discovery and the pharma industry. An editorially independent blog from the publishers of Science Translational Medicine. All content is Derek’s own, and he does not in any way speak for his employer.

How do you drive investors to spend money on cutting-edge cancer treatments? One idea, according to economist Andrew Lo, is to sell securities in a megafund of research projects. Economics correspondent Paul Solman explores how financial engineering could be the starting point for curing cancer.