Originally published on prweb.com
The Dan Calugar Finance Scholarship Committee is pleased to announce that the winner for the 2021 fall term is Ben Cartwright, a student at Colorado State University pursuing his Master of Finance.
“This scholarship allows me to focus on my master’s degree with little worry about the financial burden of pursuing a graduate degree,” said Cartwright.
As a recent honors graduate from Colorado State University, Cartwright earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with Investment Analysis and Corporate Finance concentrations. He recalls realizing his fondness for algorithmic trading while working at Epic, the medical record software company, during the pandemic. Cartwright was passionate about finance and math during his undergraduate studies, thus sparking his interest to educate himself on how to program when the opportunity to work with Epic arose.
“While at Epic, I loved programming while working as a technical solutions engineer in the resolute professional billing application. I quickly found myself enthralled with coding issues on the billing application and wanted to further apply my understanding of finance to my newfound coding skills, which led me to decide to pursue my Master of Finance at Colorado State University,” said Cartwright.
After receiving his master’s degree, Cartwright plans to pursue a career in quantitative finance. He took courses from Udacity on his own time to further his knowledge surrounding programming and machine learning, being newly exposed to these fields of study. He quickly excelled in his Python and SQL skills and his understanding of machine learning.
Cartwright also developed a few side projects revolving around developing his finance knowledge during his studies. His first project involved programming a portfolio standard deviation calculator in python using linear algebra and portfolio management.
His second project, which Cartwright is currently working on, is a trading bot that utilizes Bollinger Bands and the Stochastic Momentum Index to identify stocks in the S&P 500 that may have a potential swing in the price of a couple of percentage points.
Dan Calugar, a seasoned investor and the scholarship’s founder, found his passion for finance and investing while writing computer programs to help him discover more profitable investment strategies during his years as a pension lawyer. He created the Dan Calugar Finance Scholarship in hopes of helping empower future generations of finance professionals.
“It’s incredible to know people are willing to support your aspirations as a student, and I cannot begin to express the immense gratitude for everyone that makes The Dan Calugar Finance Scholarship possible. I hope to embrace such generosity in everything I do and pay this act of kindness forward one day in the future,” said scholarship recipient Ben Cartwright.
About Daniel Calugar
Daniel Calugar is a versatile and experienced investor with a background in computer science, business, and law. He developed a passion for investing while working as a pension lawyer and leveraged his technical capabilities to write computer programs that helped him identify more profitable investment strategies. When Dan Calugar is not working, he enjoys working out and being with friends and family, and volunteering with Angel Flight.