Wanted: Thirty students for a new graduate program at the University of Hawai'i's Shidler College of Business. Must be able to do complex mathematical equations. Undergraduate degree in math, computer science, physics or economics is a plus. Past business experience optional.

They're called financial engineers, or "quants" — short for quantitative analysts.

Starting in 2009, UH will begin offering a new one-year master's of science degree in the field of financial engineering, which blends the often volatile world of finance with the exacting requirements of the hard sciences.

Similar financial engineering programs at the University of California-Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon University have become quick tickets to lucrative jobs on Wall Street.

"We found that there's very, very large student demand for these programs," said Vance Roley, Dean of the Shidler College of Business.

Financial engineering is a multi-disciplinary field that tries to use mathematical formulas to derive investment strategies for stocks, bonds, currencies and financial derivatives. The strategy is often used by hedge funds and Wall Street investment firms.

According to a recent article in the Financial Times magazine, there are 10 hedge funds that operate in Hawai'i. But there are a number of banks, insurers, commodities traders, agricultural companies, insurers and manufacturers and other industrial companies that rely on this type of analysis to hedge against the price of commodities they use to make their products.

Even airlines and local telecommunication companies find themselves using such hedging strategies to protect against the soaring price of fuel or rising or declining interest rates.

According to UH business professor Eric Mais, the new UH program will develop its own niche by specializing in valuations for weather-related derivatives. The business school will partner with UH's School of Ocean and Earth Sciences and Technology, which is a leader in climate studies, especially in Asia.

Many of the models developed under this partnership could be used by agriculture companies that want to hedge against weather-related damage to crops and crop futures. Insurance companies can also develop models for managing their risk against natural disasters such as hurricanes, Mais said.

Michael Latch, a graduate student at UH's electrical engineering program, said he could have benefited from such a program.

The 31-year-old Latch also works as an intern with local equity research firm NamiNori LLC, where he employs many of the mathematical skills he used as an engineer to develop financial models for trading positions.

Latch, who studied physics as an undergraduate, said he's often called on to develop computerized models for seemingly unrelated securities.

"There's a big demand for people with the ability to program computers or who have a background in math or advanced statistics," he said.