MSc Operational Research and Finance

MSc Operational Research and Finance will give you expert skills in revenue management, credit scoring, and financial risk management. A summer dissertation provides an opportunity to develop your research skills, often in a commercial setting. You’ll graduate with the applied analytics and financial modelling skills highly sought after by financial institutions.

World Top 40 and 7th in the UK for Statistics and Operational Research (QS World University Rankings by Subject, 2021).

The study of operational research is the application of scientific methods to the study of complex organisational problems. We’ll train you in key techniques, methods and approaches, and you’ll apply them to practical problems. You’ll also learn about the role of operational research in financial markets and corporate finance.

This operational research master’s at the University of Southampton will give you in-depth knowledge of:

You’ll get a specialist understanding of applied analytics and financial modelling that’s applicable across financial institutions and in financial operations.

The summer dissertation gives you an opportunity to develop your research skills, often in a commercial setting, and our industrial liaison team will work with you to find a project that suits your skills and ambitions.

All MSc students have the opportunity to compete for a 3-month summer project with an external organisation, which will form the basis of their dissertation. Alternatively, students have the option of working on an internal project linked to cutting-edge research led by one of our academics.

The part-time study option for this course will not be running for the 2020/21 academic year.

If you prefer, you can apply to study this course as:

Your modules and fees may vary if you choose a different study option.

The leader for this course is Dr Hou-Duo Qi, who’s current research interest is on matrix optimisation with applications in finance and statistics. Examples include the (low-rank) nearest correlation matrix problem from finance and convex quadratic semidefinite programming in multidimensional scaling.

Find out more on Dr Hou-Duo Qi’s staff profile page.