Sikder Huq
Home Blog Research Projects Teaching

Recent writing

Pinned A self-improving agentic quant research harness with a human in the loop

A self-improving multi-agent coding system. Agents implement each hypothesis independently, review each other's code, reason about what's holding a strategy back, and test alternative fixes, while a registry of every past experiment keeps failed ideas from returning. Correctness comes from forced agreement, AI-assisted human verification across market regimes, multiple independent backtest engines, and a seven-gate path to trust. I set the direction, the agents automate the search, and the combination finds better paths than either of us would alone.

Read more
Pinned An agent-friendly charting tool for inspecting backtests

A flexible, open-source charting tool I built for my quant research. It renders candles, trades, stops, and indicators in one HTML file, zooms like a paid trading platform, and can be driven by AI agents that add overlays, pick the window, and label what to review.

Read more Open source
Seven gates between an idea and live money

Seven checks I use before a trading idea can move from research to capital. They cover code validity, walk-forward testing, trial counts, sealed evaluation, shadow execution, and risk limits.

Read more

Courses taught

Blog

Feb 2, 2026 Pinned

A Self-Improving Agentic Quant Research Harness with a Human in the Loop

A self-improving multi-agent coding system. Agents implement each research hypothesis independently, review each other's code, reason about where a strategy struggles and why, and test alternative fixes. An experiment registry remembers every idea tried. Correctness comes from forced agreement between implementations, AI-assisted human verification across market regimes, reproduction in multiple independent backtest engines, and a seven-gate promotion path. I set the direction, the agents automate the process, and together we find better paths than either would alone.

Read more quant · AI engineering · 10 min
Dec 5, 2025 Pinned

An Agent-Friendly Charting Tool for Inspecting Backtests

Summary metrics can hide incorrect or surprising individual decisions. I built this flexible, open-source tool for my own quant research: it reconstructs every decision in an interactive HTML chart with trades, stops, signals, and market context, zooms like a paid platform, and exposes a plain-Python API that AI agents drive to add indicators, select windows, and label what deserves review.

Read more quant · open source · 3 min Open source
Feb 15, 2026

Seven Gates Between an Idea and Live Money

Strong historical results can come from bugs, luck, or repeated experimentation. I describe seven progressively harder checks that move an idea from basic correctness through independent validation, shadow execution, and tightly constrained rollout.

Read more quant · research systems · 8 min
Jan 3, 2026

How a 15-Second Bar-Labeling Bug Changed Two Years of Backtests

A subtle time-labeling error shifted every derived data interval while leaving the output plausible. An independent comparison exposed the problem, and correcting it materially changed two years of results.

Read more quant · data engineering · 9 min
Dec 12, 2025

From 300 GB of NQ Ticks to Backtests in Minutes

I converted 24 months of market history, including over 300 GB of raw tick and order-book data, into compact reusable datasets. The pipeline and targeted optimizations made key calculations 8x to 789x faster while keeping correctness-critical code auditable.

Read more quant · data engineering · 11 min

Research

My research focuses on distributed algorithms for large-scale networks, distributed systems, self-adjustment, cloud computing, and IoT, evaluated both theoretically and experimentally. Ph.D. under Professor Sukumar Ghosh, The University of Iowa.

Publications
2019
Locally Self-Adjusting Hypercubic Networks
Sikder Huq, Sukumar Ghosh
arXiv preprint · abs/1905.07699
2017
Locally Self-Adjusting Skip Graphs
Sikder Huq, Sukumar Ghosh
IEEE ICDCS 2017 · 16.9% acceptance
2017
Distributed Load Balancing in Key-Value Networked Caches
Sikder Huq, M. Zubair Shafiq, Sukumar Ghosh, Amir Khakpour, Harkeerat Bedi
IEEE ICDCS 2017 · 16.9% acceptance
2015
Self-Adjusting Skip Graphs
Sikder Huq, Sukumar Ghosh
SSS 2015 · Symp. on Stabilization, Safety & Security of Distributed Systems
2011
An Efficient and Cost-Effective Maximum Clique Analysis Based Approximation in Military Application of WSN
F. Jaigirdar, M. M. Islam, Sikder Huq
IEEE ICCIT 2011
2011
Grid Approximation Based Inductive Charger Deployment Technique in Wireless Sensor Networks
F. Jaigirdar, M. M. Islam, Sikder Huq
IJACSA · Vol. 2, Issue 1
2011
Intelligent Car Control for a Smart Car
Md. N. Hasan, S. M. Didar-Al-Alam, Sikder Huq
Intl. Journal of Computer Applications · Vol. 14, No. 3
Posters & talks
2017
The Audience in Twitter Communication
G. R. Boynton, Sikder Huq, Y. Mojeva
IC2S2 2017 · poster
2017
Self-Adjusting Skip Graphs — invited talk
Sikder Huq
Algorithm Reading Group · University of Iowa
Dissertation
2018
Sikder Rezwanul Huq · Advisor: Sukumar Ghosh
Ph.D. dissertation · University of Iowa · Autumn 2018 · DOI 10.17077/etd.lumu-vzd6
Professional Service
2023
Reviewer, Intl. Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems (SRDS)
2022
Industry Track Technical Program Committee Member & Session Chair
IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE)
2017–18
Reviewer, Elsevier JPDC · IEEE ICC
Selected Recognition
2021
Consumer Engagement Relentless Award
Amazon
Recognized for the robot mitigation effort
2013–14
Outstanding Computer Science TA Award
University of Iowa
2008
Best Project, Prime Bank 1st IUT National ICT Fest
Court Management System · Islamic University of Technology

Projects

A selection of things I've built, from research prototypes to production systems.

2025

Agentic quant research platform

Independent research: backtesting, alpha discovery, and real-time monitoring over ~100B tick-level datapoints, with AI agents in the research loop.

python · numba · parquet · agent tooling
2015

Twitter data processing with MongoDB

A web interface for spatial analyses on Twitter data, backed by a sharded MongoDB cluster.

mongodb · node
2014

Skin detection with kNN + Nyström approximation

GPU-accelerated kNN over 500M+ data points in 160 dimensions for pixel-level skin detection.

cuda · c++ · matlab
2014

Automated programming grader

Python harness that auto-runs student submissions against spec; used for 150-student sections at Iowa.

python
2014

Dict Eye: video subtitle dictionary

Android app that reads words from subtitles in real time and stores them as spaced-repetition flashcards.

android · vuforia
2013

Co-authorship network analysis

Network-science analysis of giant components, degree distributions, and diameters in research collaborations.

graphs · networkx
2009

LocaGrid: local HPC grid

Globus-based grid with PBS/SGE clusters and a friendly Java portal; undergraduate thesis work.

globus · java
2008

Supreme Court case automation

Case-handling system for the Bangladesh Supreme Court with four user roles. Best Project, IUT ICT Fest 2008.

java · oracle

Teaching

Courses I've instructed at the University of Iowa and Cornell College, where I served as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Computer Science.

As instructor · University of Iowa
CS:3330

Algorithms

Summer 2018
22C:109

Programming with Java

Fall 2014
As instructor · Cornell College
CSC:301

Algorithms and Data Structures

Block 4, Spring 2019
CSC:140

Software Architecture

Block 3, Spring 2019
CSC:317

Computer Networks

Block 2, Spring 2019
CSC:151

Discrete Mathematics for CSE

Block 3, Fall 2018
CSC:140

Foundations of Computer Science

Block 2, Fall 2018
CSC:218

Computer Organization

Block 1, Fall 2018
As teaching assistant · University of Iowa
22C:021

Data Structures (discussion)

Summer 2016
22C:005

Introduction to Computer Science (lab)

Summer 2015
22C:016

Computer Science I: Fundamentals (discussion)

Spring 2014
22C:005

Introduction to Computer Science (lab)

Fall 2013