Robert Huebscher: Can Financial Engineering Cure Cancer?

A sure way to end a conversation at a cocktail party is to mention that your job entails financial engineering. Securitization and the collateralized obligations it produced led to the financial crisis and the near-collapse of the financial markets. But financial engineering’s bad reputation could turn around: A highly respected academic has devised a way to apply the core principles of financial engineering to one of the most daunting challenges facing mankind.

Andrew Lo thinks financial engineering can cure cancer.

The biggest problems confronting cancer research are the enormous cost of developing drugs, the long research and development cycles and the high likelihood that a drug will fail. The rewards for a successful drug, however, are...