Research Students

Filippo Addarii

Filippo Addarii is a PhD student at IFT. Founding Partner and CEO of PlusValue, Filippo is a serial entrepreneur having previously founded companies and third sector organizations including Nethical srl, Euclid Network Lbg., and Impact Alliance Holding srl.

Filippo has 20 years of experience working internationally with multi-stakeholder coalitions, driving innovation initiatives for socio-economic development both as a policy adviser and strategic consultant. In that capacity, he has also worked with the European Commission, British Government, Italian Government, UN Agencies, multinational corporations and philanthropic foundations. He has been a strategic adviser on impact investing for mainstream market players, navigating the financial system towards sustainability and away from environmental and human destruction.

Filippo holds a degree in Philosophy, an MSc in management on non-profit organisations, and an MRes in Urban Sustainability and Resilience from University College London (UCL).

Publications:

“Private-Public Partnerships for science and technology” (2020)
“Social Impact Investing Innovation” (2019)
“Impact investing in Boosting investment in social infrastructure in Europe” (2018)
“Vision and Trends of Social Innovation for Europe” (2017)

Email: filippo.addarii@plusvalue.org

Millie Deng

Millie Deng is a PhD student at IFT. She has a background in financial mathematics and holds an MSc in Mathematics & Finances and a BSc in Statistics. Her research interest includes private equity funds performance evaluation, investment strategy, deal structures, portfolio management as well as statistical inference and stochastic modelling.

Email: guanrou.deng.21@ucl.ac.uk

Claudia Giannoni

Claudia Giannoni is a PhD student at IFT. She is an experienced entrepreneur, having founded and run two real estate companies for several years across Europe, Asia and the Middle East, and the UK, London. She is a co-founder of a Proptech Start-up, a SaaS product that raised £2m in private funding, and the founder and CEO of a blockchain start-up funded by UCL Innovation & Enterprise.

Claudia holds a Master in Architecture from the University of Florence and an MSc in International Real Estate from University College London (UCL). Her PhD project focuses on blockchain applications for alternative assets. Please click here for more details about her research

Email: claudia.giannoni.16 @ucl.ac.uk

Cosimo Izzo

Cosimo Izzo is a PhD student at IFT. He is also an Economic Forecaster at Now-Casting Economics. His research interests are in Econometric Time Series Analysis and Machine Learning. Before joining UCL, he was a Research Analyst at the European Central Bank. Cosimo holds a Master in Economics from Bocconi University, as well as a Master in International Finance from HEC Paris.

Publications:

Email: cosimo.izzo.18@ucl.ac.uk

Raad Khraishi

Raad Khraishi is a PhD student at IFT. His background is in Economics and he holds a BA from UCSB and an MSc from UCL. Raad's research is currently funded by NatWest Group where he also works as a Lead Data Scientist on a wide range of machine learning problems in areas such as financial crime, pricing, credit risk, and portfolio management. His research interests are in applications of reinforcement learning and deep learning techniques in banking.

Publications:

Email: raad.khraishi@ucl.ac.uk

Zihao Liu

Zihao Liu is a PhD student at IFT. He received a Bachelor’s degree in Finance from Yunnan University of Finance and Economics, China, in 2017. He also holds Masters degrees in Financial Engineering from the University of York, and Banking and Digital Finance from IFT.

Zihao’s research interests include assets and derivative pricing, rural finance, regional economics, sharing economy and the application of machine learning in finance. His MSc dissertation “Capital Asset Pricing model in continuous time with stochastic volatility” with Dr. Paola Zerilli at York was nominated as the programme’s top thesis. His 2016 paper on South Asia regional economic proceedings was published by leading French press and his research on Chinese rural consumer finance and sharing economy was awarded the national prize in China. With a strong interest in ESG and green finance, his current research considers ESG investments and credit risk with the support of Machine Learning.

Email: zihao.liu.19@ucl.ac.uk

Yuen Lo

Yuen Lo is a PhD student at IFT. He also works at nChain, a leader in enterprise blockchain. His current research includes DeFi, decentralized exchanges, and the use of blockchain to ensure data integrity and enable secure selective sharing. The provisional title of his PhD thesis is Economic Applications of Blockchain.

Yuen has an MRes in Finance and Management from SOAS, and a BSc in Economics from the LSE. Prior to coming to UCL, he worked in investment management for a decade, during which he gained the CFA.

Publications:

Email: y.lo @ucl.ac.uk

Pin Ni

Pin Ni is a PhD student in Financial AI at the IFT. He holds patents in AI & BigData and has published related papers in prestigious journals and conferences as the first author with hundreds of citations (ASOC, NCA, ISF, TOIT, DSS, IEEE BigData, ICAIF, etc.). He is an invited reviewer in NLP, AI, Computing, and other reputed venues in CS. He holds professional membership in major CS&AI associations, including IEEE, ACM, ACL & CCF. He has received research funding from the Ministry of Sci & Tech (Taiwan), UoA (NZ), XJTLU (China), etc. He co-founded KnoWis Lab, XJTLU in 2019 and accomplished industrial R&D on Cognitive Intelligence Technologies in Digital Healthcare, Crime Investigation, Policy Analysis, etc. Now he is also an active member of the AIRiskLab within IFT.

His current research interests include Financial AI (FinTech), Knowledge Graph, NLP, Deep Learning, Medical Informatics, etc.

Email: pin.ni.21@ucl.ac.uk

Pornpanit Rasivisuth

Pornpanit Rasivisuth is a PhD student at IFT. She is interested in the application of natural language processing to analyse text and improve due diligence process and portfolio strategy, primarily in the application of machine learning in venture capital and private equity. She is currently investigating the use of NLP on text analytics for investment.

She has recently completed her MSc in Computational Finance at UCL and holds a BSc in Computer Science and Business from the University of Bath.

Email: p.rasivisuth.20@ucl.ac.uk

Renda Rundle

Renda Rundle is a PhD student at IFT. She is also the senior portfolio analytics specialist at ALUWANI Capital Partners. Renda’s research interest include portfolio analytics, behavioural investing, smart beta, dynamic tactical asset allocation, and applying machine learning methods to financial markets. Her previous experience includes quantitative research in Central & Eastern European Emerging Markets, South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.

Renda is currently focusing on the evolutionary nature of macroeconomic regimes and using machine learning techniques to identify and predict significant shifts in the underlying environment, which could have far-reaching impacts on asset returns.

Email: barenda.rundle.16 @ucl.ac.uk

Barsha Sharma

Barsha Sharma is a PhD student at IFT. She is also an Economist in the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA, UK civil service). She has a background in Economics and Finance. Barsha holds an MSc from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a BSc from King's College London. Her research interests include industrial organisation and systemic risk, as well as econometric analysis and machine learning.

Email: barsha.sharma@ucl.ac.uk

Philipp Wirth

Philipp is a PhD student at IFT. His background is in finance, economics and machine learning, holding an MSc in Behavioural Finance from Queen Mary University of London and a BSc from JGU Mainz. Before joining the IFT, he worked as an AI Investment Specialist for Arabesque in London and in different roles for an AI-focused German asset manager as well as a boutique investment bank.

His main research interests are in quantamental asset pricing and portfolio optimisation, focusing on digital assets, decentralised finance and equities along with methods and theories in this field such as machine learning, quantum computing, behavioural biases and sustainability.

Email: philipp.wirth.22@ucl.ac.uk

José Juan de León

José Juan de León is a PhD candidate at the IFT, with a strong foundation in finance, quantitative analysis, and engineering. He holds both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from University College London, where he graduated with the highest honours. José Juan has received several prizes for his work, including the IEEE Prize, Outstanding MEng Graduating Student Prize, and recognition on the Dean’s List.

His research focuses on asset valuation, capital asset pricing models, data-driven investment strategies, and financial modelling, with a particular emphasis on equity markets and long-term financial drivers. José Juan’s expertise lies in developing innovative public equities investment strategies based on quantitative analysis, econometrics and market dynamics.

Email: jose.guillamon.19@ucl.ac.uk

Ying Zhang

A PhD student at IFT. My background is in finance, economics, and statistics, holding both MSc and BSc in Statistics. Before joining the IFT, I worked as a financial analysist in an investment bank in China.

My main research interests are data mining, firm efficiency analysis, ESG investment, sustainable development, and PE&VC investment.

Email: ying-zhang.22@ucl.ac.uk

Photo credit: Deepmind via Unsplash