Georgetown College. Georgetown University.

Kevin Brogan

In Dr. Hans Engler, Kevin Brogan found a mentor who shared his love for applied mathematics. Brogan, a Georgetown math major, followed his undergraduate education by attending Harvard Law School and landing a job in New York firm Davis Polk & Wardwell’s Capital Markets Group, part of the Corporate Department, where he puts his math skills to work every day.

“Generally, law school and lawyering is an exercise in creative problem solving and careful analysis of facts and scenarios. I found mathematics to be a particularly useful background to have in studying and practicing law,” Brogan says. “In math, a large part of your task is to make use of theorems, principles, and other tools to be applied in solving new problems. Thus, in a lot of ways math is akin to the same sort of fact gathering, analysis, and problem solving involved in law school and corporate law.”

At the firm, Brogan works in derivatives and structured products. Derivatives are financial products that corporations and investment banks enter into to help hedge their exposure to marketplace risk. The transactions are concrete examples of applied math—the parties structure the transactions by using complex mathematical formulas to offset the risk they are exposed to. Brogan says a math background can prove a huge advantage in helping lawyers really understand the transactions, so that they are better able to ensure that they are structured and documented appropriately.

“I find that because of my math background I am able to contribute in ways that would otherwise not be possible for a first-year associate,” he explains. “The coursework I did with Dr. Engler was in optimization and that is exactly what I am involved in now—transactions aimed at finding the optimal way for companies and banks to hedge their risk.”

Brogan and classmate Simone Koo worked with Dr. Engler doing research for their math theses on conflicting criteria for tournament matrices. Brogan says they began the research by reading everything they could on tournament matrices and met each week to discuss and take turns presenting various elements of the text.

“Dr. Engler made time available constantly to meet with us to review our research, to go over the readings we had, and to make sure that we understood all of the information we were processing,” Brogan says. “As this was a completely new area for both Simone and myself, Dr. Engler was a huge help in taking us from inexperienced—as we were on day one—to sort-of experts in the area who were qualified to write a thesis on the topic, so we relied on his help extensively to climb that learning curve.”

They created examples of structuring tournaments so non-optimal outcomes would result; for example, they proved that tournaments could result in weaker participants winning the tournament and stronger participants losing the tournament. Koo wrote program code that would take several tournament participants and play out the tournament in various ways to gather empirical data on how often tournament could result in non-optimal results.

“I found Dr. Engler to be brilliant, but also very approachable and interested in developing a relationship with his students, which made him a very attractive person to work with. I thought his research was very exciting and complex but that he was able to make it accessible and understandable to his students,” Brogan says. “My favorite part of working with Dr. Engler was his enthusiasm. He was always very eager and excited to discuss our latest readings with Simone and me as well as review the examples and programming we were working on. His enthusiasm and energy made the project a particularly exciting one to be involved in.”

As someone working in the business world, Brogan recognizes the value of a strong foundation in mathematics, technology, and finance. The trend, he says, is toward more emphasis on such skills, and he is thankful for the excellent education he received as a Georgetown undergraduate.

“I think working with and taking course offerings by Dr. Engler and others in the math department is fundamental in positioning Georgetown students, who will by and large go on to become industry leaders, with invaluable and marketable skills,” he says. “I found Dr. Engler and several of the other math professors, such as Dr. Vogt and Caraballo, to be among the most dedicated professors at Georgetown University. They are completely engaged in their research and studies and extraordinarily committed to their students (spending hours of their free time in office hours to meet with students), and this type of enthusiasm and dedication makes the math department the most exciting place to be at Georgetown.”

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