18/04/2025: Welcome to Dr Charles Kind (new lecturer)

A warm welcome to Dr Charles Kind, who has joined us as part time Lecturer in Financial Technology. Charles is well-known to the group, having spent the last year helping us to deliver teaching on our MSc Financial Technology with Data Science. Charles has a PhD in Mathematics, Unversity of Bristol, on Skyrmion Bags. He also has many years of industrial experience in financial technology, including time as partner in a hedge fund, where he designed price predictive online trading systems. Charles’s research interests include AI applictions in finance and financial market simulations. When he is not working with us, Charles spends his time as a senior research fellow in the School of Physics, where he works on applications of neural networks to nuclear safety.

25/02/2025: Best Paper Award at ICAART 2025 (Yunhua Pei, Jin Zheng, & John Cartlidge)

I am pleased to share that the Best Paper Award for International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence (ICAART 2025) has been awarded to Yunhua Pei, Jin Zheng, and John Cartlidge for their paper: Dynamic Graph Representation with Contrastive Learning for Financial Market Prediction: Integrating Temporal Evolution and Static Relations. Well done Yunhua - it’s quite an achievement for a PhD student. Keep up the great work!

24/01/2025: Welcome to Shiyu Zhang (new PhD student)

A warm welcome to Ms Shiyu Zhang, who joins us this month to begin her PhD studies, supervised by Dr Zining Wang, Dr Jin Zheng, and Prof John Cartlidge. Shiyu joins us from the Chinese University of Hongkong, where she received an MSc in Mathematics. Shiyu’s PhD is funded by the China Scholarship Council (CSC) - University of Bristol (UoB) PhD Scholarships Programme, and her research will explore mechanism design in decentralised exchange protocols.

17/01/2025: Welcome to Erum Iftikhar (visiting PhD student)

A warm welcome to Ms Erum Iftikhar, who is visiting us for a 6-month PhD visit, supervised by Dr Wei Wei and Prof John Cartlidge. Erum is a second-year PhD student at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, where she is supervised by Prof Elena Beccalli and funded by a PNNR scholarship. While at Bristol, Erum will be exploring risk in de-fi lending mechanisms.

09/12/2024: Congratulations to Pengju Zhang on successfully defending his MScR thesis

I am very happy to share the wonderful news that today, Pengju Zhang successfully defended his thesis titled “GNN-based Social Media Sentiment Analysis for Stock Market Forecasting and Trading” and has been awarded an MScR, subject to minor corrections! His examiners were Prof Qingwei Wang (University of Cardiff), Prof John Cartlidge (University of Bristol), and Independent Chair Prof Weiru Liu (University of Bristol).

01/12/2024: Congratulations to Zining Wang for award of PhD (King's College London)

I am pleased to share that Zining Wang has been awarded PhD in Finance from King’s College London.

01/10/2024: Welcome to Dr Eva Christodoulaki (new PDRA)

A warm welcome to Dr Evangelia Christodoulaki, who has joined University of Bristol as Senior Research Associate in AI for Collective Intelligence. Eva has a PhD in Computational Finance from University of Essex, with thesis title Fundamental, Sentiment and Technical Analysis for Algorithmic Trading Using Novel Genetic Programming Algorithms. She also has MSc in Computational Finance (University of Essex) and BSc in Economics (University of Ioannina). Eva will be working with Prof John Cartlidge on stability in financial markets, as part of EPSRC’s AI Hub AI4CI.

16/09/2024: Welcome to Wenyu Gu (new PhD student)

A warm welcome to Mr Wenyu Gu, who joins us this month to begin his PhD studies, supervised by Prof Dave Cliff and Dr Wei Wei. Wenyu is a recent graduate of our own MSc Financial Technology with Data Science, University of Bristol, UK, where he spent the year as Student Rep. Wenyu’s PhD is funded by the China Scholarship Council (CSC) - University of Bristol (UoB) PhD Scholarships Programme, and his research will explore agent-based simulation modelling and AI-methods for automated trading.

16/09/2024: Welcome to Weibin Feng (new PhD student)

A warm welcome to Mr Weibin Feng, who joins us this month to begin his PhD studies, supervised by Dr Jin Zheng, Dr Ran Tao, and Prof John Cartlidge. Weibin joins us from King’s College London, UK, where he received an MSc in Finance. Weibin’s PhD is funded by EPSRC DTP Studentship and his research will explore risk hedging in emissions trading.

06/09/2024: Welcome to Zhirong Zhang (visiting PhD student)

A warm welcome to Ms Zhirong Zhang, who is visiting us for a 12-month PhD visit, supervised by Dr Jin Zheng. Zhirong is a third-year PhD student at the School of Information Engineering, Chang’an University, China, where she is supervised by Prof Yong Fang. Her visit to Bristol is funded by China Scholarship Council (CSC). While at Bristol, Zhirong will be exploring optimization and GNN applications in finance.

01/08/2024: Congratulations to John Cartlidge on promotion to full Professor

I am very happy to share that John Cartlidge has been promoted to full Professor of Financial Technology.

03/06/2024: Welcome new PDRAs for Stratlib.AI (Yunhua and Henry)

After interviewing a strong field of candidates for the role of PDRA on the Stratlib.AI project, I’m pleased to share that our own Yunhua Pei and Zinuo (Henry) You will both be taking on the role part-time, while continuing to work on their PhDs. Under the supervision of John Cartlidge, Henry’s research will focus on explainable AI approaches to black-box optimisation of financial investment models, while Yunhua will focus on cross-modal AI models for financial forecasting.

10/05/2024: Funding award (£1m UKRI Innovate UK - Stratlib.AI)

I’m pleased to share that UKRI Innovate UK have awarded £1m to fund collaborative R&D project Stratlib.AI - A trusted machine learning platform for asset and credit managers, as part of a national £19m investment to accelerate trustworthy and responsible AI. The consortium includes industry partners Stratiphy (leading the project), Smart Pension, Aventur Group, and Chenavari Financial Group; and academic partners University of Bristol (lead: John Cartlidge) and University of Birmingham (lead: Prof Karen Elliott). The grant will fund one PDRA to work with John in FEL for 12 months. For more information, see articles in Fintech Finance News and Finextra.

10/04/2024: Congratulations to Zijian Shi on successfully defending his PhD thesis

I am extremely pleased to announce that, today, Zijian Shi has successfully defended his thesis Deep Learning Based Limit Order Book Modelling and Simulation and has been awarded a PhD subject to minor corrections! His examiners were Adam Ntakaris (University of Edinburgh), Dr Jin Zheng (University of Bristol), and Independent Chair Prof Seth Bullock (Univeristy of Bristol).

06/02/2024: Funding award (£12m EPSRC AI Hub - AI4CI)

I’m pleased to share that UKRI EPSRC have awarded £12m to fund Artificial Intelligence for Collective Intelligence (AI4CI), as part of an £80m national initiative on AI. The AI4CI Hub is a UKRI National AI Research Hub involving universities from each of the UK’s four constituent nations and over forty initial stakeholder partners from across academia, government, charities and industry. It will addres key societal challenges in Environmental Intelligence, Financial Stability, Healthcare Ecosystems, Human-Centered Design, Infrastructure and Governance, Pandemic Resilience, and Smart City Design. Hub Director Prof Seth Bullock is a member of ISL and FEL’s John Cartlidge will co-lead the Hub’s theme on Financial Stability with Prof Maggie Chen of University of Cardiff. Over the next 5 years, AI4CI will fund two PDRAs and one PhD Studentship to work with John and the team in FEL.

10/01/2024: Funding award (GW4 - Fintech Research Network)

I’m pleased to share that Dr Jin Zheng (PI) has been awarded a GW4 Development Award to create and lead a regional Fintech Research Network. Partners include University of Bath (Dr Xiaohan Xue), University of Bristol (Dr Jin Zheng and Prof Richard Harris), Cardiff University (Prof Qingwei Wang and Prof Aman Eshraghi) and University of Exeter (Dr Jane Shen). The network will host workshops on AI in Finance - Asset Management, 25 Apr 2024, Bristol; and AI in Finance - Digital Insurance, 13 Jun 2024, Cardiff.

21/09/2023: Welcome to Tianye Wang (new PhD student)

A warm welcome to Ms Tianye Wang, who joins us this month to begin her PhD studies, supervised by Dr Yan Ge and Prof Dave Cliff. Tianye joins us from Harbin Instiute of Technology, China, where she received an MSc in Science Management and Engineering (Big Data). Tianye’s PhD is funded by the China Scholarship Council (CSC) - University of Bristol (UoB) PhD Scholarships Programme, and her research will explore AI and machine learning applications for stock trading automation.

21/09/2023: Welcome to Lawrence Clegg (new PhD student)

A warm welcome to Mr Lawrence Clegg, who joins us this month to begin his PhD studies, supervised by Dr John Cartlidge and Dr Yan Ge. Lawrence is a recent graduate of our own MSc Financial Technology with Data Science, University of Bristol, UK. Lawrence’s PhD is funded by EPSRC DTP Studentship and his research will apply AI and machine learning to sports forecasting and betting markets.

04/09/2023: Welcome to Dr Yang Yang (new lecturer)

A warm welcome to Dr Yang Yang, who has joined University of Bristol as Lecturer in Financial Technology. Yang has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering, University of Birmingham, UK, on the effect of nanoforces on the attachment of cells. He has also worked as Postdoctoral Research Associate in Finance at Tsinghua University, Beijing, where he explored wash trading in centralised crypto exchanges. Yang’s research interests include blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and decentralised finance.

01/09/2023: Welcome to Mr Zining Wang (new lecturer)

A warm welcome to Mr Zining Wang, who has joined University of Bristol as Lecturer in Financial Technology. Zining has MSc in Computatational Finance at King’s College London (KCL), and he is currently completing a PhD in Finance at King’s College London. Zining’s research interests include decentralised finance, economics of blockchain, and behavioural finance.

15/08/2023: Congratulations to Hugo Alcaraz Herrera on successfully defending his PhD thesis

I am extremely pleased to announce that Hugo successfully defended his thesis today and has been awarded a PhD subject to minor corrections. His examiners were Dr James Borg (Aston University) and our own Dr Ayush Joshi, with Prof Seth Bullock acting as Independent Chair. See Hugo’s thesis:
Studies on complex representations for evolutionary computation and mitigation techniques for pathologies observed in coevolutionary computation.

01/08/2023: Welcome to Dr Wei Wei (new lecturer)

A warm welcome to Dr Wei Wei, who has joined University of Bristol as Lecturer in Financial Technology. Wei has recently received a PhD in Mathematical Finance from University of Sussex Business School, UK, on the topic of random orthogonal matrix simulation targeting Kollo skewness and kurtosis. Wei also holds an MSc in Economics and a BSc in Information and Computing Science. Her research interests include simulation, high-dimensional systems, and machine learning applications in finance.s

15/01/2023: Welcome to Yunhua Pei (new PhD student)

A warm welcome to Mr Yunhua Pei, who joins us this month to begin his PhD studies, supervised by Dr John Cartlidge and Dr Jin Zheng. Yunhua has an MSc in Data Sciecne from University of Sheffield, and he joins us from China CITIC Bank, where he has worked as a quantitative trading development engineer for one year. Yunhua’s research will exlpore deep learning approaches for financial market forecasting.

12/12/2022: Funding award (Jean Golding Institute - Intelligent Algo Trading)

I’m pleased to share that Dr Jin Zheng (PI) has been awarded Jean Golding Institute Seed Corn Funding for the project “Developing an Integrated and Intelligent Algo-trading System.” This is a collaboration with Prof. Dave Cliff (co-PI) from ISL and Prof. Richard R.F. Harris (co-PI) from the University of Bristol Business School. The funding will support a one day national workshop on Data Science and Machine Learning in Finance, to be held in Bristol, UK, on May 23, 2023.

21/09/2022: Welcome to Pengju Zhang (new MScR student)

A warm welcome to Mr Pengju Zhang, who joins us this month to begin his MScR (Master of Science by Research), supervised by Dr Jin Zheng and Prof Dave Cliff. Pengju has a BSc in Physics from Peking University. His MScR research will explore social media sentiment analysis for stock market forecasting.

20/09/2022: Welcome to Rongwei Liu (new PhD student)

A warm welcome to Ms Rongwei Liu, who joins us this month to begin her PhD studies, supervised by Dr John Cartlidge and Dr Jin Zheng. Rongwei has a Masters in Finance, Technology and Policy from University of Edinburgh Business School and a bachelors degree in Software Engineering from Peking University. Her research will explore reinforcement learning approaches to portfolio optimisation.

20/09/2022: Welcome to Zinuo (Henry) You (new PhD student)

A warm welcome to Mr Zinuo (Henry) You, who joins us this month to begin his PhD studies, supervised by Dr John Cartlidge and Dr Jin Zheng. Henry holds an MSc Distinction in Electronic and Electrical Engineering from the Univeristy of Sheffield, and a BSc in Electronic Science and Technology, Southwest University, China. His PhD research will explore graph neural networks for multivariate time series, with applications in finance.

16/09/2022: Welcome to Theo Constantinides (new PhD student)

A warm welcome to Mr Theodoros Constantinides, who begins his PhD studies this month, supervised by Dr John Cartlidge and Dr Yan Ge. Theo is well-known to the group, having spent the last 12 months as Hybrid TA, helping us to deliver teaching on our new MSc Financial Technology with Data Science. Before that, Theo graduated with First Class MEng in Computer Science, Unviersity of Bristol. Theo has now been awarded a Computer Science Doctoral Training Associate (DTA) Studentship to support his studies for a PhD. As DTA, Theo will work on his PhD for 2 years part-time, while also teaching on MSc Financial Technology with Data Science, and will then switch to full-time PhD study for the remaining three years. Theo’s research will explore privacy in distributed blockchain-based systems.

19/07/2022: Congratulations to Yan Ge on PhD graduation (University of Sheffield)

This week, I’m pleased to share that Yan Ge will be attending his PhD graduation ceremony at the University of Sheffield for his PhD thesis Graph Representation Learning with Motif Structures.

07/02/2022: Welcome to Arwa Bokhari (new PhD student)

A warm welcome to Arwa Bokhari, who joins us this month to begin her PhD studies, supervised by Prof Dave Cliff and Dr John Cartlidge. Arwa graduated first in her class with a Masters in Information Technology, King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and she has held a position as a lecturer at Taif University in Taif, Saudi Arabia, since 2019. Funded by a Saudi Government Scholarship provided by the Saudi Arabian Cultural Bureau (SACB), Arwa’s PhD research will use agent-based simulation and modelling to explore opinion dynamics in financial markets.

22/07/2021: Welcome to Mr Yan Ge (new lecturer)

A warm welcome to Mr Yan Ge, who has joined University of Bristol as Lecturer in Financial Technology. Yan has an MSc in Advanced Software Engineering at University of Sheffield, and he is currently completing a PhD in Computer Science at University of Sheffield. Yan’s research interests include graph representation learning for asset price prediction and systemic risk analysis.

28/04/2021: Welcome to Dr Jin Zheng (new lecturer)

A warm welcome to Dr Jin Zheng, who has joined University of Bristol as Lecturer in Data Science. Jin has a PhD in Mathematical Sciences from the University of Liverpool, on the topic of Theoretical and Numerical Study on Optimal Mortgage Refinancing Strategy. She has previously held the post of Research Fellow at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where she explored optimal refinancing strategies. Subsequently, Jin has worked as a quantitative researcher for sports trading at White Swan Data. Jin’s research interests include machine learning, natural language processing, and quantitative methods in finance and energy economics.

01/04/2021: Hello world! We are the Financial Engineering Lab (FEL)

We are the Financial Engineering Lab (FEL), a new research sub-group of the federated Intelligent Systems Laboratory (ISL). We consist of two core faculty, Prof Dave Cliff and Dr John Cartlidge; one postdoctoral research associate, Dr Raj Mani Shukla (who works with John on his Claritum KTP project); and two PhD students, Mr Hugo Alcaraz Herrera and Mr Zijian Shi, supervised by John and Dave. Dave has recently taken over as the new Head of ISL Federated Research Group and John is the inaugural Head of the FEL. FEL is only small at the moment, but we expect to grow quickly as the first cohort of students for our new MSc Financial Technology with Data Science will arrive in September. It’s going to be an exciting journey ahead!