Priyanshu Tiwari - Personal Website

About Me

Hey there! I'm Priyanshu Tiwari, a senior undergraduate student at IIT Kanpur. My academic journey? It's been a wild ride exploring the crossroads of quantitative finance, machine learning, and economics—with a major soft spot for auction theory and game theory (iykyk).

Just wrapped up an internship at BNY Mellon, where I got to flex as a Software Developer in their Asset Servicing Engineering team. Definitely caught some valuable industry insights there!

When I'm not drowning in code or financial models, you'll catch me behind my camera shooting moody monochrome photography (aesthetic, right?). Total film nerd too—anything from Scorsese and Tarantino to Nolan has me in my feels. And my Spotify? Full of indie-jazz and alternative R&B that absolutely no one has heard of.

Let's connect and create something cool together!

Research

Pricing Asian Option by Binomial Tree and Branching Process

Quantitative Finance - Supervised by Prof. Sourav Majumdar, IIT Kanpur (Aug 2024–Ongoing)

Derived formulas for Arithmetic and Geometric Average Asian Options using the Cox-Ross-Rubinstein Method for the n-th time interval.
Computed risk-neutral probabilities for each time step to price Asian Options based on Arithmetic and Geometric means.
Established upper and lower bounds for Asian Option prices in discrete time and extended these results to continuous time.
Investigating optimal paths for stock price averages using branching processes to improve pricing accuracy.
Developing transition probability functions for risk-neutral probabilities, modeling them as a Markov Chain to find the stationary distribution.

Impact of Economic Policy Uncertainty on Financing Infrastructure

Corporate Finance - Supervised by Prof. Harshal Mulay, IIT Kanpur (Jan 2024–Ongoing)

Investigated the potential impact of EPU on the choice between the use of Project Finance and General Corporate Finance across 23 countries.
Cleaned and merged data from different sources: deal-level (Dealscan), firm-level, industry-level (Compustat), and country-level variables.
Implemented a multivariate logistic regression model with Project Finance as the dependent variable, including EPU, controls, and fixed effects.
Ensured robustness by checking for and controlling heteroscedasticity, autocorrelation, multicollinearity, and endogeneity in the model.
Banks are more likely to mandate Project Finance during high uncertainty periods, as it reduces their risk and improves borrower cash flow.

Connectedness Among Edible Oil and Oilseeds

Commodity Derivatives - Supervised by Prof. Prabina Rajib, IIT Kanpur (May 2023–Sep 2023)

Determined whether the connectedness between edible oil commodities acts as a hedge against economic policy uncertainties.
Examined the interconnectivity between edible oil markets through TVP-VAR using the Kalman Filter estimator.
Calculated Dynamic Total Connectedness, Net Directional Connectedness & Net-Pairwise Directional Connectedness.
The TCI shows a moderate level of connectedness with a value of 45.62%, with Soybean being the most dominant commodity and Rapeseed meal the least.

Decision-Making in Anxiety Disorder: Neural Approach-Avoidance Mechanisms

Neuroscience - Supervised by Prof. A. Ramakrishnan, IIT Kanpur (Jan 2023–Apr 2023)

Measured maladaptive avoidance behaviour and its impact on decision-making in situations with competing rewards and threats.
Conducted an anxiety disorder study on 30 participants using a 2D paradigm built on PsychoPy and skin conductance.
Analysed behaviour in anxiety, attentional biases, and amygdala hyper-responsivity and decision-making in mental illness.
Summarized anxiety’s impact on avoidance behaviour in reward-threat conflicts, and neural mechanisms in anxiety disorders.

Optimal Mechanisms in Two-item Setting

Mechanism Design - Supervised by Prof. Thirumulanathan, IIT Kanpur (Aug 2022–Sep 2022)

Reviewed papers identifying potential to expand optimal mechanism design to selling multiple items with uniformly distributed buyer valuations.
Established foundation in optimal mechanism design for uniform distributions, laying groundwork for research on extending the model.
Project aims to contribute to mechanism design theory by exploring optimal mechanisms for selling multiple items with uniform valuations.

Publications

You can also find my articles on my Google Scholar profile.

Journal Articles

From Fields to Futures: Connectedness Among Edible Oil and Oilseeds—Where Soybean Leads, Others Follow

Asia-Pacific Financial Markets (Published: 2024-05-02) [Paper]

This paper analyzes the connectedness among edible oils, oilseeds, and the U.S. Economic Policy Uncertainty Index using the TVP-VAR method.

Citation: Nilotpal Sarma, Priyanshu Tiwari, Prabina Rajib. (2024). "From Fields to Futures: Connectedness Among Edible Oil and Oilseeds—Where Soybean Leads, Others Follow." Asia-Pacific Financial Markets. Springer Japan, 1-17.

Conference Papers

Impact of Economic Policy Uncertainty on Financing Infrastructure

MEA’s 89th Annual Meetings, Kansas City, Missouri (Scheduled: 2025-03-21)

This study investigates how Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) impacts the preference for Project Finance vs. General Corporate Finance in infrastructure funding. To be presented at the MEA’s 89th Annual Meetings 2025.

Citation: Dr. Harshal Rajan Mulay, Priyanshu Tiwari, Dr. Rama Seth. (2025). "Impact of Economic Policy Uncertainty on Financing Infrastructure." Presented at MEA’s 89th Annual Meetings 2025.

From Fields to Futures: Connectedness Among Edible Oil and Oilseeds—Where Soybean Leads, Others Follow

9th PAN IIM World Management Conference 2023 (Presented: 2024-01-27)

This study examines the connectedness among edible oils, oilseeds, and the U.S. Economic Policy Uncertainty Index. [Related Published Paper]

Citation: Nilotpal Sarma, Priyanshu Tiwari, Prabina Rajib. (2024). "From Fields to Futures: Connectedness Among Edible Oil and Oilseeds—Where Soybean Leads, Others Follow." Presented at the 9th PAN IIM World Management Conference 2023.

CV

Education

B.Tech in Materials Science and Engineering, IIT Kanpur
Minor: Machine Learning and Applications
Minor: Industrial and Management Engineering

Work Experience

Software Development Engineer Intern, Bank of New York (May 2024–July 2024)
- Designed RESTful APIs for CRUD operations using Spring Boot and MongoDB.
- Built an interactive dashboard with Angular and incorporated web service authentication.
- Scheduled automated reports and alerts with Splunk to monitor trade logs.
- Automated client communications via Jakarta Mail API and Excel/CSV handling with Apache POI.

Research Experiences

Pricing Asian Option by Binomial Tree and Branching Process

Quantitative Finance - Supervised by Prof. Sourav Majumdar, IIT Kanpur (Aug 2024–Ongoing)

Derived formulas for Arithmetic and Geometric Average Asian Options...
Computed risk-neutral probabilities...

Impact of Economic Policy Uncertainty on Financing Infrastructure

Corporate Finance - Supervised by Prof. Harshal Mulay, IIT Kanpur (Jan 2024–Ongoing)

Conducted logistic regression modeling...

Connectedness Among Edible Oil and Oilseeds

Commodity Derivatives - Supervised by Prof. Prabina Rajib, IIT Kanpur (May 2023–Sep 2023)

Explored TVP-VAR to study interconnectivity...

Decision-Making in Anxiety Disorder: Neural Approach-Avoidance Mechanisms

Neuroscience - Supervised by Prof. A. Ramakrishnan, IIT Kanpur (Jan 2023–Apr 2023)

Studied reward-threat conflict decision-making...

Optimal Mechanisms in Two-item Setting

Mechanism Design - Supervised by Prof. Thirumulanathan, IIT Kanpur (Aug 2022–Sep 2022)

Reviewed literature on mechanism design...

Skills

Programming: Python, R, Java, C, C++

Financial Modeling: Monte Carlo methods, TVP-VAR, Logistic Regression

Tools: Spring Boot, Angular, Splunk, PsychoPy

Projects

Data-Driven Portfolio Optimization with Short-Selling and Borrowing Constraints (Mar 2024) [GitHub]
- Applied Modern Portfolio Theory to construct optimal portfolios.
- Visualized efficient frontiers under borrowing and short-selling constraints.

Improving YONO SBI App: User Experience and Usability Focus (Apr 2024)
- Conducted qualitative user feedback analysis and proposed UI/UX improvements via Figma.
- Applied thematic analysis and heuristic evaluations for functionality optimization.

Strategic Market Positioning for Freedom Sunflower Oil (Jun 2023)
- Performed SWOT and 4P analyses to assess market positioning in Andhra Pradesh.
- Utilized the Bullseye framework to establish a competitive edge.

Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Stock Portfolio Management (Apr 2024–May 2024)
- Developed multi-agent RL models (A2C, PPO, DDPG) for portfolio trading.
- Used sentiment, economic, and technical indicators to achieve superior portfolio returns.

Service and Leadership

Leader, Brain and Cognitive Science Club, IIT Kanpur

Manager, International Relations Wing, IIT Kanpur

Download Full CV

Last updated: Dec 2024

GSoC 2025

Google Summer of Code 2025 Work Product

Summer 2025

Documentation of my contributions and work completed during Google Summer of Code 2025. This comprehensive report details the project objectives, implementation details, challenges faced, and outcomes achieved.

View Work Product Report