Columbia University Opens Center for AI in Real Estate and Fintech

Columbia University has started its Center for Artificial Intelligence in Business Analytics and FinTech. According to the announcement, the intent is to find new ways to apply advanced data science and artificial intelligence, including machine learning and deep learning, to real estate and finance.

The group is part of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and is “led by some of the top financial technologists in the world with experience at major Wall St. firms and hedge funds.”

“The software we develop is done collaboratively with our partners with the intent of integrating these solutions into their day-to-day workflow,” a release quoted Josh Panknin, Director of Real Estate AI Research and Innovation at the Center, as saying.  “Our collaborations involve developing more holistic platforms that provide deep insight into market behavior and investment decisions using cutting edge analytics models.  We don’t do things that have already been done.  We focus on providing new capabilities to our partners.”

The institution points specifically to a “void” in real estate and its image of largely lagging behind technical innovation for four reasons: little in-house technical expertise; heavy reliance on off-the-shelf and unoriginal technology; years of overblown hype and claims leading to unrealistic expectations about what it takes to develop and integrate technology; and disappointing returns from the estimated more than $100 billion invested in proptech.

There are multiple ways they hope to have an impact on real estate, including developing open sources of training data, working directly with companies to “build competitive advantages,” educating engineers with experience in real estate data science, or presenting research findings to the industry.

“We use our financial experience from Wall St. and hedge funds, combined with our technical expertise in advanced analytics, to better understand industry needs and offer solutions based on technologies that have not been utilized before,” the release quoted Professor Ali Hirsa, Director of the Center for AI in Business Analytics and FinTech and Director of Financial Engineering at SEAS. “This brings significant value to their operations through better efficiency and new capabilities. Our goal is to bring the more sophisticated approaches to financial technology used for years by hedge funds and Wall St. into the real estate sector.”

The advisory board draws on real estate executives and technical experts with experience in such organizations as CBRE, Northstar Asset Management, Mack-Cali Realty Corporation, IBM, Goldman Sachs, and Apollo Global Management.