MSc students win top prize at 2025 Investment Hackathon
November 13, 2025
Three students from the Master of Science (MSc) – Financial Engineering program at HEC Montréal were among the winners of the 2025 Hackathon, an international investment competition held in Montréal on November 5 and 6.
Jean-Simon Desmarais, Venkat Narayana Ramakrishnan and Alexis Roger, along with teammates Alexis Perron and Romain Mrad, took first place in the competition, which challenged participants to develop investable portfolio strategies using textual data. The winning team received a cash prize of $15,000.
Several other MSc students from HEC Montréal also took part in the event, although they did not place among the top three teams.
The Hackathon kicked off in September, when participating teams received the details of the challenge and the datasets required to build a portfolio of 50 to 70 publicly traded global equities. In early October, ten finalist teams were selected based on the quality of their written reports. These finalists then competed on November 5 and 6, presenting their solutions before a jury of experts from academia and industry.
Alexis Perron, Venkat Narayana Ramakrishna, Alexis Roger, Jean-Simon Desmarais and Romain Mrad.
The competition emphasized originality and creativity in the use of large datasets and the application of machine learning techniques. Participants were evaluated primarily on the novelty of their ideas and their innovative use of technology.
The Hackathon is held annually by the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University and FIAM, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the financial community in Québec.
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