Faculty of Science, University of Colombo, is the prominent Science faculty in Sri Lanka without any doubt. Faculty of Science has produced many valuable personalities in Sri Lanka, with the science background. But, the relationship between the Faculty of Science and the finance industry was not a famous topic to discuss until the administration’s decisions which were taken recently, to enhance the industrial exposure of the undergraduates.
Students’ Association of Industrial and Financial Analysis (SAIFA), the newest students’ society in Faculty of Science, is formed with an intention to expand the exposure of undergraduates’ in finance industry. SAIFA can be introduced as a fulfillment for a gap, which exists for a longer period of time with the modern competitive industry and the science graduates.
What is the idea behind SAIFA?
Generally, a science graduate is recognized as a person who has bunch of knowledge in pure sciences. But the suitability for the corporate industry of the graduate was largely questioned when they are compared with the graduates who graduated in management and business study streams.
Faculty of science, University of Colombo has all the resources to produce a complete graduate who has the ability to adopt with any kind of a situation. Specially, the knowledge in Mathematics and Statistics is an additional advantage in order to capitalize the opportunities in the corporate industry, since those are the basement of any logic behind the theories.
SAIFA is formed in order to enhance opportunities for our graduates and to build a platform for the undergraduates who seek the opportunities in the finance industry with the skills they gained throughout their university life.
How SAIFA will do that?
As mentioned earlier, SAIFA has the ultimate objective to build a complete graduate who can overcome any kind of a challenge in the corporate and financial industry. In order to that, the undergraduates should be armed with the knowledge and experiences.
SAIFA aims to provide the opportunities to obtain the required knowledge and the experience for the undergraduates from the activities which are planned to implement in the future.
What are those activities?
When a student comes to the faculty as a 1st year undergraduate, he or she may not has the all the resources to develop their own professional path. In fact, he or she may not know about the opportunities available for them and the challenges ahead of him. SAIFA has identified this issue and aims to provide solutions for it.
Basically, as the preliminary step, we have planned to conduct a lecture series about the various streams in the finance industry, such as actuarial science, insurance and securities etc. These are the areas which are not famous in young students’ minds, but having a higher demand when they come to the finance industry.
SAIFA aims to develop the entrepreneur skills of the undergraduates in the financial market through the relationship we have developed with the entities operating in the finance industry. SAIFA aims to provide that opportunity for our members who seek it.
In addition to that, SAIFA expects to organize a career day annually with the participation of the various corporate sector entities. This will enhance the awareness about the SAIFA in the corporate industry.
Who can join SAIFA?
Students of the Faculty of Science who are following finance and industry related subjects are eligible to join SAIFA. The knowledge of them on finance and industry related subject areas will help them to extend their abilities when SAIFA provides them the additional opportunities which are mentioned above.
What are the strengths of SAIFA?
Our main strength is our members who have the knowledge in finance and industry. Specially, with the knowledge they obtain from the degree program “Industrial Statistics and Mathematical Finance” will help them to get the knowledge they need to be a professional such as a financial analyst, an actuary or an entrepreneur in the financial industry some day.
SAIFA has got alumni in a vast area of the corporate and private sectors locally as well as internationally.
SAIFA expects to extend its operations beyond the borders. Currently, we are working closely with the SIAM (Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics), a USA based society formed by a group of applied mathematicians in USA. SIAM is very famous within USA university students and has student’s chapters in many foreign universities.
In near future, SAIFA will become the first and only students’ chapter of SIAM not only in Sri Lanka, as well as in South Asia. This will be a golden opportunity for us to work closely with the foreign lecturers and students and to get the foreign experiences as well.
Addition to that, we are expecting to introduce SAIFA to the financial analysts in Sri Lanka, where we can develop a direct link with them which will be a valuable opportunity.
What more?
SAIFA is thankful for our patron, Prof. T.R Ariyaratne, the Dean, Faculty of Science, who gave the permissions and the valuable ideas to make SAIFA more complete. We should thankful for all heads of the departments who helped to form SAIFA.
Special thanks go to our staff advisor, Dr. S.S.N Perera for all the advices and for the unlimited support he gave. He was with us every time throughout our hard journey to make SAIFA a reality. Without him, SAIFA will not be a reality for sure.
SAIFA should thank all the past students of Industrial Statistics and Mathematical Finance degree, who help us. SAIFA is a result of a continuous contribution by all of them.
Finally, SAIFA thanks for all who help even with a single word to make this a reality.
Purna Kaushalya.
Secretary (2013/14),
Students’ Association of Industrial and Financial Analysis.
Bhathiya Wickramasinghe.
President (2013/14),
Students’ Association of Industrial and Financial Analysis.
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