My name is Lionel Martellini. I'm a professor of finance at the EDHEC Business School, which is home to some of the world's most renowned programs in finance and investments. Also the director of EDHEC Risk Institute to leading academic think tank on investment solutions. Hello, my name is Vijay Vaidyanathan. I'm a research associate at EDHEC Risk Institute, and I'm also CEO and founder of Optimal Asset Management, which is a technology-driven asset management firm based in Silicon Valley. The practice of investment management has been greatly transformed in recent years by computational methods. The goal of these course is not only to provide you with an in-depth understanding of the underlying concepts and techniques that are required for modern investment practice, but we will also help you build on that financial scientific basis in an attempt for you to be able to implement all of these techniques and methodologies using Python programming language. This course is the first in a series of four courses, which combined form a specialization in data science and machine learning in investment management. We are going to start by introducing the basics of risk and return analysis, and trying to understand eventually how one can form portfolios on the basis of individual assets. Based on Nobel Prize winning work on portfolio construction and portfolio analysis, we will eventually introduce modern, state of the art investment techniques that are used on a daily basis to form meaningful investment portfolios. As we cover the theory and the methods in lecture videos in class, you'll also be able to code along with us in lab sessions. The point of doing that is that by doing so you will gain a deep and permanent understanding of how these methods really work when you actually code them yourselves. If you do all of the exercises that we have and complete all of the lab exercises, you will not only have gained that understanding but you will have a toolkit at your disposal that you can use to perform your own analysis to implement your own methods and perhaps with the newfound knowledge that you have, you'll even be able to improve on these methods. This course provides a rigorous foundation on data science and computational methods in investment management with an emphasis on the latest thinking in portfolio construction. It's designed to help investment professionals develop programming skills and expertise in data science, and conversely, to help professionals with expertise in programming or data science apply those skills in the investment industry. The program is also designed to train aspiring students with a background in finance, computer science, or data science who wish to enter the field of investment management. Finally, we hope it will be helpful to individuals who are looking to manage their own personal investments better and with greater confidence. Welcome to EDHEC Risk Institute. We hope you'll join us for this online course. It's going to be a lot of fun.