Dr. Elena Vasquez and her team at the University of the Philippines started asking a simple question: why were traditional financial models failing to adapt to rapidly changing market conditions? Their research into machine learning applications for financial analysis began as an academic project but quickly evolved into something much larger.

What started as weekend coding sessions in a cramped university lab became the foundation for what we know today. The early prototypes could analyze basic market patterns, but the real breakthrough came when we realized the potential for teaching others these methodologies.