HQG gives UConn students hands-on experience operating a quantitative fund. Members work on difficult problems across quantitative research, software engineering, and project management in a selective, startup-paced environment advised by UConn faculty and industry alumni.
- Live
- capital
Real capital creates real pressure, real governance, and real learning.
- Market-neutral
- portfolio mandate
Low-drawdown systematic strategies researched, tested, and deployed algorithmically.
- 5%
- acceptance rate
Candidates move through screening and two technical interview rounds.
- 300+
- student community
A broader campus network for events, resources, and technical recruiting.
Why HQG exists
HQG exists to give ambitious students the chance to learn systematic investing by building systems that actually have to work. We maintain market-neutral, low-drawdown portfolios through fully algorithmic strategies, and we trade live capital because simulations alone cannot teach judgment under pressure.
Real risk changes the work. It sharpens research standards, raises engineering expectations, and turns every deployment into a lesson in accountability.
How the team is organized
HQG is organized around cross-functional collaboration. Researchers need fast, trustworthy infrastructure. Engineers need live research problems worth solving. The result is a workflow where ideas move from dataset to backtest to deployment with clear governance at every step.
Quantitative Research
Students apply AI, statistics, optimization, and market intuition to problems where the data is messy and the feedback is unforgiving.
Recent projects:
- Consumer alternative data feature importance for macro trend analysis through the Carbon Arc partnership.
- Continual reinforcement learning allocation strategy outperforming classic 60/40 portfolios on a static universe.
- Custom alternative datasets engineered from web scraping pipelines and prediction market odds.
Software Engineering
Engineers build the infrastructure that turns research into governed, observable, repeatable production systems.
Recent projects:
- GPU-optimized backtesting framework with Monte Carlo analysis and noise injection.
- Automated execution engine with live risk limits, real-time telemetry, and audit trails.
- Cloud dashboard integrating HQG products, deployed live at dashboard.uconnquant.com.
Recruiting and outcomes
The core team is capped at 12 students, and admission is intentionally rigorous. Candidates are evaluated for technical ability, drive, and communication skills. Outside the core fund team, HQG supports a community of more than 300 students through resources, quant trading events, and engineering events.
Capital structure
HQG is seeking to raise $50,000 from firms that want to recruit students with practical experience in quantitative finance and software engineering. Principal remains in an Alpaca Business account and is never withdrawn. Profits above principal fund pre-approved expenses, primarily data subscriptions, while donations are accepted by a nonprofit being established by the University of Connecticut School of Business for HQG.