On 1 July 2026, Professor Dave Cliff retired from the University of Bristol after 19 years, becoming Emeritus Professor.
Dave joined Bristol in 2007 following a distinguished career in academia and industry, including time at MIT and HP Labs. He has been a world-leading pioneer in the application of artificial intelligence to financial trading, creating the seminal ZIP (Zero-Intelligence-Plus) adaptive trading algorithm at HP Labs in 1996, which was subsequently shown by IBM researchers to outperform human traders in experimental financial markets. He subsequently worked as a Director in Deutsche Bank’s FX Complex Risk Group on its London foreign-exchange trading floor, before returning to academia.
Dave later served as a member of the Lead Expert Group overseeing the UK Government Office for Science Foresight: The Future of Computer Trading in Financial Markets project (2010–2012), examining the impact of advances in computer-based trading on financial markets.
Dave has played a central role in the Financial Engineering Lab since its foundation, as well as serving as Head of the Intelligent Systems Laboratory (ISL). He has contributed enormously to the development of our research community through his research, teaching, collaboration, and supervision of PhD students.
Dave has been a wonderful colleague, mentor and friend to many of us in FEL, and we are enormously grateful for everything he has contributed to the group. We are very pleased that retirement does not mark the end of Dave’s association with FEL: as Emeritus Professor, he remains a valued member of our research community.
We wish Dave a very happy and well-earned retirement and look forward to continuing to work with him in the years ahead.