Leonid I. Perlovsky

Dr. Perlovsky is President and Managing member of Ascent Capital Management, LLC. He is an inventor of the Neural Modeling Fields (NMF) technology, a novel mathematical technique that is a backbone of the Ascent money management, risk reduction, and market prediction algorithms. Preliminary development of this technology was performed at Nichols Research Corporation (a half-billion dollar US defense contractor), where Dr. Perlovsky served as Chief Scientist from 1986 to 1999. At Nichols, Dr. Perlovsky led a number of DOD funded efforts in which military applications of this technology to recognition and prediction of targets and signals was perfected. During 1994-1995 he has developed foundations of NMF applications to financial markets and money management. Since then this technology has been continually improved.

Dr. Perlovsky has worked in a number of areas including theoretical physics, quantum field theory, elementary particle physics, applied mathematics, information theory, estimation theory, operations research, signal processing, oil exploration, seismic wave propagation, psychology, vision, medical imaging, detection, pattern recognition, prediction, tracking and control, information fusion, philosophy of science, quantum computing, neural networks, data mining, semiotics.

Currently in addition to leading financial research and prediction at Ascent, he is a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, Principal Research Physicist and Technical Advisor at the Air Force Research Laboratory, leads projects on artificial intelligence, semantic web, mind modeling, evolution of languages and cultures. He served as Chief Scientist at Nichols Research, a $0.5 B high-tech organization, leading the corporate research in intelligent systems; professor at Novosibirsk University and New York University. He published more than 350 papers, 10 book chapters, and three books: “Neural Networks and Intellect,” Oxford University Press, 2001 (currently in the 3rd printing), and two books by Springer in 2007. Dr. Perlovsky organizes international conferences, chairs IEEE Boston Computational Intelligence Chapter; serves on the Board of Governors of International Neural Network Society, on Editorial Boards of four journals, including Editor-in-Chief for “Physics of Life Reviews,” which he originated together with the late Nobel Laureate I. Prigogine. He lectures world wide. He has received prestigious National and International awards including the 2007 Gabor Award, the top engineering award given by the International Neural Network Society, and the 2007 McLucas Award, the top scientific award from the US Air Force.

Leonid Perlovsky received MS degree summa cum laude in physics from Novosibirsk University, Novosibirsk USSR in 1971 and Ph.D. degree in theoretical physics from Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Moscow, USSR in 1975. From 1975 to 1978 he served as Assistant and Associate Professor of Physics at Novosibirsk University and Professor of Applied Mathematics at Siberian Institute of Technology; 1979 to 1980 as Research Professor at New York University; 1980 to 1985 as Senior Research Specialist with Exxon Research; and 1985 to 1986 Principal Research Scientist with Advanced MRI Systems. He then came to Nichols Research, where he served as Chief Scientist and Senior Fellow till 1999. When Nichols Research was sold to CSC, in 1999, he co-founded InnoVerity.com and Ascent Capital Management. He has also served as a consultant to Software Foundry, MIT Computer Center, and MIT Earth Resources Laboratory. He passed series 66 examination (a security industry requirement for investment advisors) and Level I and II examination toward prestigious Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation.

Valery Petrov

Dr. Petrov is a Chief Technical Officer and member of Ascent Capital Management, LLC. He helped developing Ascent trading system. Dr. Petrov has 14 years of investment experience in both equity and fixed income markets. Over the last 6 years he was helping to manage billions of dollars for a major investment firm.

Previously, Dr. Petrov conducted research program in the field of nonlinear dynamics, his work was published in a series of 25 journal articles (including 2 in Nature and 5 in Physical Review Letters) and it received 400 citations in the peer’s publications.

Dr. Petrov received MS degree summa cum laude in physics and applied mathematics from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Department of Physical and Chemical Biology in 1990, and Ph.D. in Nonlinear Dynamics and Physical Chemistry from Department of Chemistry West Virginia University in 1995 (GPA: 4.00/4.00).  He holds Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation and passed series 66 examination (a security industry requirement for investment advisors).