Our main objectives are:

• Doing academic research on AI methods specifically developed for Fintech and their use and regulation - published in leading academic journals and conferences
• Knowledge dissemination, primarily at our Meetups
• Development of new insights, products and services, useful to the industry, startups and government
• Courses and Masterclasses

We primarily work on the following topics:

• Compliance of AI algorithms in Finance
• Fraud detection and money laundering using AI
• Risk management with AI and Computational/Mathematical modelling
• Responsible AI based Financial Services
• Sustainable Finance

Team AI4FinTech 

Drona Kandhai

Prof. Drona Kandhai is head of the Quantitative Analytics department of Financial Markets in ING Amsterdam. He is professor in Computational Finance at the Computational Science Lab and the Stochastics group of the University of Amsterdam. Drona has been active in the financial industry for close to 20 years where he has worked on pricing and risk model validation, development and integration in IT systems. Kandhai has  extensive experience in a broad range of financial products and has worked in several departments of  ABN AMRO and ING Bank.  He holds a PhD in Computational Physics from the University of Amsterdam on the subject of numerical modelling and simulation of complex fluid flows.

His primary research interests are on the use of data-driven microscopic simulations as a way to understand the complex behaviour of financial markets, and how to include the driving mechanisms in multi-scale models for derivatives pricing and risk management. Kandhai has published extensively in various scientific journals.

Erman Acar

Dr. Erman Acar is an assistant professor of explainable AI (XAI) for finance, with a joint appointment shared between Socially Intelligent Artificial Systems (SIAS) group at Informatics Institute, and the Cognition, Language and Computation (CLC) lab at the Institute of Logic, Language and Computation. His current research focuses on integrating machine learning systems with causal and logical symbolic components to extend their capabilities in reasoning and explainability.

Erman completed his PhD in automated decision making using knowledge representation in single-agent and multi agent settings in 2018 at the University of Mannheim, Germany, and later worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Knowledge Representation and Reasoning group at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the Reinforcement Learning group at Leiden University. During his career, he has been publishing his research in major AI journals and conference, and he has done research visits to various institutes including Free University of Bolzano, University of Calabria, University of Amsterdam and University of Oxford.

Read more about Erman Acar.

Fernando Santos

Dr. Fernando Santos is an Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam, at the Socially Intelligent Artificial Systems (SIAS) group. He has an ICAI joint appointment position with ING Bank, developing research on fairness, transparency, and strategic dynamics in AI. Fernando received his PhD in Computer Science and Engineering in 2018, from Instituto Superior Técnico (Lisbon, Portugal).

Fernando’s research lies at the interface of AI and complex systems: He is interested in understanding collective dynamics in multiagent systems and in designing fair/pro-social AI. Before joining UvA, Fernando was a James S. McDonnell postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University (Levin Lab). He was a visiting student at Princeton, Université Libre de Bruxelles and TU Delft.

Simon Trimborn

Simon Trimborn (PhD) is an Assistant Professor of Econometrics and Data Science at the Amsterdam School of Economics, University of Amsterdam. Before joining the UvA, Simon was an Assistant Professor at the Department of Management Sciences at City University of Hong Kong and a Research Fellow at National University of Singapore.

Simon’s research focuses on high-dimensional data analysis to tackle specific problems in the cryptocurrency market, blockchain and social networks. For his research Simon is developing and using network methods, text analysis methodologies, and investment techniques. Simon’s work introduced the CRIX index family which is owned by Royalton Partners and computed by S&P Global: https://www.royalton-crix.com/ . Simon serves on the Scientific Board for the CRIX index and is an Associate Editor for the journals Digital Finance and Annual Review of FinTech.

PhD positions

Do you want to become part of a dynamic community that is at the forefront of AI-driven Fintech innovation? Our experts from the Faculty of Science, the Faculty of Economics & Business and the Faculty of Law* are collaborating with leading Fintech companies and (regulating) organizations to develop cutting-edge AI solutions to solve complex problems in financial technology.

Are you ready to be part of this exciting ecosystem and take your career to the next level? If so, you are invited to apply for one of the seven PhD positions described below.

* The involved research institutes within the faculties:

• Faculty of Science: Informatics Institute, Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, Korteweg de Vries Institute for Mathematics.
• Faculty of Economics & Business: Amsterdam Business School, Amsterdam School of Economics.
• Faculty of Law: Institute for Information Law, Amsterdam Center for Law & Economics.

External partners

The external partners that we will be collaborating on these project include:

• Mollie
• ING
• Imprima
• Zuva AI
• Association of Insurers
• Adyen
• ABN-AMRO
• Transaction Monitoring Netherlands