國立臺灣大學｜電子工程學研究所
Graduate Institute of Electronics Engineering
National Taiwan University
National Taiwan University
AI is rapidly transforming software engineering, financial markets, and the way we make decisions. TheIntelligent Design Automation Allianceis honored to welcomeDr. Valeriy Balabanov (包偉力), who will share his career journey from academia to Big Tech and Wall Street, exploring the intersection of software engineering, artificial intelligence, and quantitative finance, as well as how engineers can navigate the uncertainties of the AI era.
Time and venue are listed below. We warmly welcome you to join us!
Title:
READY ENGINEER ONE
Speaker:
Dr. Valeriy Balabanov (包偉力)
Date & Time:
11:00-12:00, Tuesday, 2026.8.25
Location:
Room 145, EE2 Building, NTU
Abstract:
The rules are changing.
How we build software. How we create value. How we make decisions. How we understand intelligence. And ultimately, how we shape the future.
Drawing on a journey from academia to Big Tech and ultimately Wall Street, this talk explores the connections between software engineering, financial markets, artificial intelligence, and how a compounding perspective shapes a career.
Along the way, we will look at how the same problems can appear very different depending on whether you approach them as a researcher, an engineer, or someone operating in financial markets. We will use a few deceptively simple questions to challenge our intuition about money, risk, and decision-making—and then turn to a much larger uncertainty: where artificial intelligence is taking us.
Will AI continue accelerating toward something resembling general intelligence, or will progress eventually begin to saturate? What happens to software engineering in either world? And, perhaps more importantly, how should someone at the beginning of a career prepare when nobody knows which future will arrive?
Somewhere inside these changes are extraordinary opportunities.
The question is: are you ready for the next level?
Bio:
Valeriy Balabanov is a software engineer at Citadel Securities, where he works on the options team alongside quantitative researchers and traders. Previously, he worked at Two Sigma, Google, and Mentor Graphics, building high-performance and large-scale software systems. An alumnus of National Taiwan University, Valeriy earned his Ph.D. in formal methods and automated reasoning. He is a recipient of the CQF Institute Award 2025. His interests lie at the intersection of software engineering, artificial intelligence, quantitative research, and financial markets. Outside of work, Valeriy did an Ironman, built chess engines, and loves math puzzles and escape rooms.
Registration：https://ppt.cc/fgVB2x
We often enter our careers with a script of what we will and won’t do, only to discover that life has its own plans; every never declared is a gamble as uncertainty becomes the norm. Today’s engineering challenges compound this unpredictability with system-level complexity, as tightly-coupled constraints evolve at an accelerating pace, constantly challenging existing assumptions. Thus, an open, proactive mindset becomes a critical asset. This talk draws on personal experience to invite the audience to move from static objectives to adventures grounded in integrity, resilience, curiosity, and grit. Our goal is not to avoid missteps perfectly, but to remain adaptable enough to stay relevant in the field — long enough to grow, to contribute, and to actually enjoy the ride.
In this talk, we will review our recent work about high-speed APD and VCSEL arrays to overcome the fundamental limitations of transceiver modules for free-space optical communication. State-of-the-art brightness, EO/OE bandwidth, and large active window size can be achieved simultaneously.
The first part of the talk will describe the common challenges that occur during comparative
evaluations of the performance of formal-methods tools (solvers, verifiers, etc.). We will also
describe the tool kit BenchExec, which makes it easy for benchmarking engineers to use Linux kernel
features like cgroups, name spaces, and overlay file systems.
The second part of the talk describes the competition on software verification,
a yearly comparative evaluation of tools for software verification.
