User:Jl565

About Me

Welcome to my user page! I'm Sebastian, one of the 300+ Pratt Stars at Duke! I'm a prospective BME/Statistics double major and finance minor wishing to integrate technology and business into a coherent undergraduate experience. My current engineering interests are biotechnology entrepreneurship – specifically in the fields of bio-computer and bio-electrical engineering, and aerospace engineering.

Grand Challenges of Engineering

Preventing Nuclear Terrorism , Robert Gallucci, Huffington Post, Updated 5th June 2012, Accessed 14 September 2014 (Preventing Nuclear Terrorism)

Matlab Demonstration

My favorite demonstration is SpreadOptionExample.m, which demonstrates how Matlab can be used to price options – a type of financial derivative which derives its value from underlying assets. Specifically, options are fundamentally contracts that give the option buyer the right but not the obligation to buy (call option) or sell (put option) a bundle of securities at a determined price (strike price) before the expiration date. This is my favorite demonstration because as someone who's considering applying my mathematical and engineering skills in managing my finances, option represent one of the best means by which I can hedge risks for my investments. For example, it's possible for me to short sell a stock while buying call options for that stock. When the price of that stock goes up, I incur losses from the short selling stock transaction but profits from buying the call option, thus reducing my losses and hence risks. I have a feeling that I'll be using Matlab quite often either as a professional quantitative analyst/financial engineer (this is one of my other career interests outside engineering) or an amateur trader to determine whether I am being offered a fair deal on options and other financial derivatives transactions.