Inside Higher Ed notes the growth of interesting connections between cutting-edge hedge funds and cutting-edge science and mathematics programs. They see these connections as an attempt to cultivate talent and connections, but also an extension of hedge funds' attempts "to create a unique space for knowledge production:"

[F]irms like Renaissance Technologies in Long Island New York are quantitative hothouses, loaded up as they are with PhDs in mathematics and theoretical physics: a veritable brain trust on a densely wired floorplate. Across the Atlantic, hedge funds such as AHL, Winton Capital, Aspect Capital and BlueCrest’s BlueTrend - all based in London – have sought to create a unique space for knowledge production; part university, part firm, part clubhouse. They’ve done this to create a conducive context for the highly sought after people who create and manage complex financial instruments. This is not surprising in many ways, but the FT story is also worth reading as it explains how hedge funds are now splicing their DNA to select higher education institutions where the best and brightest of these PhDs are trained up.

The splicing process is happening via the establishment of joint ventures with universities such as Oxford (the Oxford Man Institute for Quantitative Finance; the Nomura Centre for Mathematical Finance), and to a lesser degree via endowed chairs (e.g., the Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk, Cambridge University).

From the perspective of firms the main logic of deepening linkages with select universities is to enhance their capacity to survey and then court high quality graduate students. Joint venture institutes, in particular, raise the “profile” of these hedge funds while simultaneously enabling them to acquire information about prospective employees. The insertion of parts of a hedge fund’s institutional infrastructure within a university, and the consequent blurring of institutional boundaries, places it three steps ahead of other hedge funds who have weaker ties with professors and contract researchers.