His research focuses on stochastic calculus and quantitative finance. Topics include optimal stopping problems, real options, energy finance, derivatives pricing, pair trading, mortgage contracts, optimal capital structure, credit risk, and machine learning. Kitapbayev’s work was published in top journals such as Review of Financial Studies, Mathematical Finance, SIAM Journal of Financial Mathematics, Mathematics of Operations Research, Quantitative Finance, Energy Economics, Applied Energy, Stochastic Processes and Applications, and Stochastics, among others.
Kitapbayev holds a BSc and an MSc in Mathematics from Lomonosov Moscow State University and a Ph.D. in Probability from the University of Manchester. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor in Financial Mathematics at North Carolina State University, a Senior Lecturer in Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and a Postdoctoral Associate at Boston University Questrom School of Business.