Francesco Piatti

PhD Student in Mathematics

Imperial College London & University of Oxford

About Me

I am a PhD student in the Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Mathematics of Random Systems, a joint programme between Imperial College London and the University of Oxford, funded by an EPSRC studentship. I am supervised by Prof. Thomas Cass (Professor of Mathematical Finance).

My research lies at the intersection of stochastic analysis and machine learning models for sequential data. I am particulalry interested in neural stochastic/controlled differential equations and state space models. Previously, I completed my MSci in Mathematics at Imperial College London with First Class Honours.

Neural SDEs State Space Models Rough Paths & Signatures AI for Finance Algorithmic Trading Mathematical Finance

Reading Room

Read a paper once. Keep the understanding.

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View Reading Room Website

Publications & Pre-Prints

Under Review

Structured Neural SDEs for Functional Calibration

Piatti, F., Iannucci, A., & Cass, T. (2026)

Under review at ICLR 2027

Neural Stochastic Differential Equations (Neural SDEs) provide flexible continuous-time generative models, but generic neural drift and diffusion networks are costly to simulate on long horizons and can give unstable gradients when the training signal is a path functional rather than a pointwise observation. We introduce SLiSDE, a family of Neural SDE models built from structured linear stochastic layers. Parallel-in-time simulation is obtained at the layer level, while expressivity is recovered by gated in-flow stacking: previous-layer paths modulate the next layer's latent flow through learned gates. For functional calibration tasks in which rare paths dominate the loss, we add an optional Girsanov tilt that acts as a learned importance sampler with an exact likelihood-ratio correction. We prove well-posedness, a discretisation error bound, validity of the change of measure, and a universality result: the terminal laws of the gated stack are dense in the space of square-integrable laws. Experiments on functional calibration benchmarks show that the structured model outperforms fully neural SDE baselines while retaining parallel-time simulation and stable importance weights.

Pre-Print

Propagating Log-Signatures: Lie-Algebraic Models for Sequential Data

Ferrera, A., Piatti, F., & Cass, T. (2026)

Pre-Print

ICLR 2026

Random Controlled Differential Equations

Piatti, F., Cass, T., & Turner, W. (2026)

International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2026), pp. 84345-84374

We introduce a training-efficient framework for time-series learning that combines random features with controlled differential equations (CDEs). In this approach, large randomly parameterized CDEs act as continuous-time reservoirs, mapping input paths to rich representations. Only a linear readout layer is trained, resulting in fast, scalable models with strong inductive bias. Building on this foundation, we propose two variants: (i) Random Fourier CDEs (RF-CDEs): these lift the input signal using random Fourier features prior to the dynamics, providing a kernel-free approximation of RBF-enhanced sequence models; (ii) Random Rough DEs (R-RDEs): these operate directly on rough-path inputs via a log-ODE discretization, using log-signatures to capture higher-order temporal interactions while remaining stable and efficient. We prove that in the infinite-width limit, these model induces the RBF-lifted signature kernel and the rough signature kernel, respectively, offering a unified perspective on random-feature reservoirs, continuous-time deep architectures, and path-signature theory. We evaluate both models across a range of time-series benchmarks, demonstrating competitive or state-of-the-art performance. These methods provide a practical alternative to explicit signature computations, retaining their inductive bias while benefiting from the efficiency of random features.

SINUM 2025

Numerical Schemes for Signature Kernels

Cass, T., Piatti, F., & Pei, J. (2025)

SIAM Journal on Numerical Analysis, 63(6), pp.2371-2394

Signature kernels have become a powerful tool in kernel methods for sequential data. In The Signature Kernel is the solution of a Goursat PDE, the authors introduce a kernel trick showing that, for continuously differentiable paths, the signature kernel satisfies a hyperbolic PDE of Goursat type in two independent time variables. While finite difference methods have been explored for this PDE, they suffer from accuracy and stability issues when handling highly oscillatory inputs. In this work, we propose two advanced numerical schemes that approximate the solution using polynomial representations of boundary conditions, employing either approximation or interpolation techniques. We prove the convergence of the polynomial approximation scheme and demonstrate experimentally that both methods achieve several orders of magnitude improvement in mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) over finite difference schemes, without increasing computational complexity.

ICML 2024

Partially Stochastic Infinitely Deep Bayesian Neural Networks

Calvo-Ordonez, S.*, Meunier, M.*, Piatti, F.*, & Shi, Y.* (2024) *Equal contributions

International Conference on Machine Learning, pp. 5436-5452, PMLR

In this paper, we present Partially Stochastic Infinitely Deep Bayesian Neural Networks, a novel family of architectures that integrates partial stochasticity into the framework of infinitely deep neural networks. Our new class of architectures is designed to improve the computational efficiency of existing architectures at training and inference time. To do this, we leverage the advantages of partial stochasticity in the infinitedepth limit which include the benefits of full stochasticity e.g. robustness, uncertainty quantification, and memory efficiency, whilst improving their limitations around computational complexity. We present a variety of architectural configurations, offering flexibility in network design including different methods for weight partition. We also provide mathematical guarantees on the expressivity of our models by establishing that our network family qualifies as Universal Conditional Distribution Approximators. Lastly, empirical evaluations across multiple tasks show that our proposed architectures achieve better downstream task performance and uncertainty quantification than their counterparts while being significantly more efficient.

Working Papers

In Progress

Deep Calibration of Interest Rate Models with Neural SDEs

Joint with Prof. Brigo and Dr. Ferrucci.

Neural SDEs Interest Rates Calibration
In Progress

The Free Signature Transform and Schwinger-Dyson Kernels

Joint with Prof. Cass and Dr. Bizzi.

Signatures Kernels Free Probability
In Progress

Cubature on Wigner Space

Joint with Prof. Cass and Dr. Bizzi.

Cubature Free Probability

Curriculum Vitae

Download CV (PDF)

Education

PhD, Mathematics

Imperial College London – University of Oxford

  • EPSRC studentship in the Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Mathematics of Random Systems
  • Supervised by Prof. Thomas Cass (Professor of Mathematical Finance)
  • Research: Neural SDEs, State Space Models, Rough Paths and Signatures, AI for Finance

MSci, Mathematics

Imperial College London

  • Graduated with First Class Honours; Dean's List (fourth year)
  • Thesis: "Deep Hedging with Signatures and Neural Rough Differential Equations" – achieved First Class

Italian Scientific High School Diploma

Liceo Scientifico Filippo Lussana, Bergamo, Italy

  • Graduated with 100/100
  • SAT Subject Test – Math Level 1: 800/800; Math Level 2: 800/800

Work Experience

Spring Intern

G-Research, London, UK

  • Participated in advanced workshops on Mathematics, Statistics, Quantitative Finance, and Algorithmic Trading

Student Researcher

Department of Mathematical Finance, Imperial College London

  • US recession forecasting using ML techniques: RNNs, random forests, and SVM with signature, RBF and GAK kernels
  • Improved accuracy of state-of-art models

Student Researcher

Department of Mathematical Finance, Imperial College London

  • Developed a novel method leveraging signatures to estimate correlation of multivariate time series with non-synchronous observations
  • Designed and implemented statistical tests and simulation pipelines in a team

Summer Intern

Studio Conca Jannone Maffeis, Bergamo, Italy

  • Financial analysis and development of Python-based software to automate analysis of financial statements

Skills

Programming

Python PyTorch JAX pandas R HPC (CPU/GPU) LaTeX

Languages

Italian (native) English (fluent) Spanish (intermediate)

Positions of Responsibility

  • Member of board of directors and board of executives of United Italian Societies Ltd (June 2021 – June 2023)
  • President of Imperial College Italian Society (June 2021 – June 2023)

Teaching

Teaching Assistant 2025 & 2026

Interest Rate Models

Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London

Graduate-level course covering the mathematical foundations of interest rate modelling, including short rate models, the HJM framework, LIBOR market models, and an introduction to XVA.

Teaching Assistant 2025 & 2026

Statistics for Finance

Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London

Graduate-level course covering statistical theory, methods and applications to finance, including time series models, hypothesis testing, and regression.

Teaching Assistant 2025 & 2026

Applied Trading Strategies

Imperial College Business School

Practical course on qualitative and quantitaive trading strategies, covering diverse asset classes, backtesting strategies, and portfolio construction.

Teaching Assistant 2023 & 2024

Probability for Statistics

Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London

Undergraduate course covering probability theory foundations: measure theory, random variables, convergence, and conditional expectation.

Teaching Assistant 2024

Mathematics for Machine Learning

Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London

Course covering the essential mathematical tools for machine learning: linear algebra, multivariate calculus, probability, and optimisation.