Érika Barbosa

Background

Trained as a civil engineer and spent five years as a structural project engineer, where the discipline was straightforward: find where a system fails under load before it does. Applied that same approach to financial markets over six years as a crypto trader, building algorithmic models and trading systems from first principles. The overlap between physical and financial infrastructure turns out to be larger than expected. Both fail in patterned ways, and both reward the analyst who can read the structure early. That foundation now informs her work at the intersection of quantitative finance, data science, and trade.

Current focus

Building the deep knowledge core that connects trade and finance at Orbitra Lab. The day-to-day work is about identifying where value leaks through the value chain: the gaps between what data reports, what systems record, and what is actually happening in cross-border trade and capital flows.

Research interests

GCC capital markets and real-world asset tokenisation. Islamic finance modelling and the structural differences it introduces into capital allocation. Computational linguistics as a method for extracting signal from regulatory and market text. Applied numerical linear algebra and information theory as foundations for more reliable models. The longer-running question: what structural engineering methods transfer cleanly into financial market analysis, and what breaks when you try.