Northfield names Michele Gambera Head of Economics

Veteran quantitative economist to lead the economics outreach of Northfield's academic decision science initiative, partnering with universities and researchers.

Northfield, part of ND Alpha, today announced that Michele Gambera, Ph.D., CFA, has joined the firm as Head of Economics. Gambera will lead the economics outreach of Northfield's academic decision science initiative, partnering with universities and individual researchers to sponsor academic work in economics and quantitative finance — with select research developed into commercial applications alongside the sponsoring institutions and their teams.

Gambera brings more than two decades of quantitative research and asset-allocation experience across asset management, academia, and central banking — a combination that positions him to bridge Northfield's commercial platform with the academic community. He joins from UBS Asset Management, where he served as Head of Strategic Asset Allocation. Earlier in his career he was Senior Research Consultant and Chief Economist at Ibbotson Associates, and spent more than nine years at Morningstar as a Senior Quantitative Analyst and later Chief Economist of Morningstar Associates. He began his career as an economist in the Supervision and Regulation division of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

His academic and teaching career runs in parallel to that industry record. Gambera has taught most recently on the Master of Quantitative Finance program at the University of Illinois, previously lectured at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and has published in peer-reviewed journals. He holds a BA/MA in Economics with honors from the University of Trento, Italy, and a Ph.D. in Economics from Pennsylvania State University. He is a CFA charterholder.

Michele has spent his career moving between rigorous academic research and its practical use in markets, and very few people do both credibly. That is exactly what this role demands. He will deepen our own economic research while building the relationships that let us fund serious academic work and bring the best of it to market alongside the researchers who create it. Ethan Eden, CEO, ND Alpha

The academic decision science initiative is intended to give academic economists a route to sponsored research and real-world application, while giving Northfield early access to emerging quantitative methods.

About Northfield / ND Alpha

Northfield provides risk and factor analytics to institutional investors. As part of ND Alpha, it delivers quantitative decision analytics across the ALPHA platform — the science, information, and personalization institutions need to make better decisions. Learn more at ndalpha.com.