Research

Our Research Pillar is a dynamic assembly of working groups dedicated to advancing the frontier of Financial Technologies.

Our Five Research Areas

Blockchain Application

Blockchain Applications
The research into blockchain applications falls under three categories: decentralised finance (DeFi), specifically the benefits of tokenisation in a decentralised marketplace, blockchain for food traceability and exploring blockchain to manage digital property rights.

Cyber Security

Cyber Security
This avenue will explore research topics relating to the model of strategic attack and defense, as well as a phenomenon known as “software contagion”. In some aspects, this research will cross paths with blockchain adoption for cybersecurity.

Privacy

Privacy
Here, privacy encompasses research into personal data wallets and the exploration of a decentralised credit bureau using privacy preserving technologies such as trusted execution environments and differential privacy. Finally, in line with CBDCs, research into the privacy considerations of CDBCs.

Digital Inclusion

Digital Inclusion
This expands into the possibility of offline payments, especially important in a country where 45% of the population has no access to a smartphone. In conjunction with the university’s resources, the Hub is in a unique position to study how offline payments on a distributed ledger can facilitate financial inclusion.

Central Bank Digital Currencies

Central Bank Digital Currencies
This area involves research into wholesale CBDC and Blockchain Banking. It also dives into the realisation of retail CBDCs and the interoperability of different CBDCs.

Research Papers

Research by our resident PostDocs, academic colleagues and students. We categorise each paper by the publication type and indicate which author is affiliated with the Financial Innovation Hub at the time of completion or publication of the work. Works are ordered by publication date or date of availability online if publication date is not yet available.

Conference Paper

IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (SSCI)

Extreme Environments Perpetuate Cooperation

Extreme Environments Perpetuate Cooperation

Brandon Gower-Winter

Geoff Nitschke

Department of Computer Science, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

Conference Paper

Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC)

Towards Run-time Efficient Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning

Towards Run-time Efficient Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning

Sasha Abramowitz

Geoff Nitschke

Department of Computer Science, University of Cape Town, South Africa

Department of Computer Science, University of Cape Town, South Africa

Conference Paper

Evolving Gaits for Damage Control in a Hexapod Robot

Evolving Gaits for Damage Control in a Hexapod Robot

Christopher Mailer

Geoff Nitschke

Leanne Raw

University of Cape Town, South Africa

Journal Article

International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues

Estimating Value at Risk and Expected Shortfall: A Kalman Filter Approach

Estimating Value at Risk and Expected Shortfall: A Kalman Filter Approach

Max van der Lecq¹ and Gary van Vuuren²

¹School of Economics, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa²Centre for Business Mathematics and Informatics, North-West University, South Africa.

Journal Article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

Social Learning in a Network Model of COVID-19

Social Learning in a Network Model of COVID-19

Allan Davids ¹, Gideon du Rand ², Co-Pierre Georg ³, Tina Koziol ¹, Joeri Schasfoort ¹

¹School of Economics, University of Cape Town, South Africa

‍²Department of Economics, Stellenbosch University, South Africa

‍³EDHEC Business School, France

Journal Article

Journal of Operations Research

Exit Spirals in Coupled Networked Markets

Exit Spirals in Coupled Networked Markets

Christoph Aymanns ¹

Co-Pierre Georg ²

Benjamin Golub ³

¹QuantCo, Inc., Cambridge

²EDHEC Business School

³Northwestern University, Evanston

Journal Article

Rosa Luxembourg Stiftung

When Finance Meets Big Data

When Finance Meets Big Data

Fabio de Masi

Research Fellow at the UCT Financial Innovation Hub

No items found.

No items found.

Working Paper

Promoting Responsible Financial Behaviour: An Innovative Collaboration with Nedbank

Promoting Responsible Financial Behaviour: An Innovative Collaboration with Nedbank

Allan Davids and Justine Burns

University of Cape Town

Working Paper

Contagious Zombies

Contagious Zombies

Christian Bittner¹

Falko Fecht²

Co-Pierre Georg ³

‍

¹Deutsche Bundesbank; Goethe University Frankfurt

²Deutsche Bundesbank; Frankfurt School of Finance & Management

³HEC Business School

‍

No items found.

No items found.

Conference Paper

Proceedings of the 57th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences | 2024

The Dynamic Effects of Blockchain-based Identity Management Adoption on Data Breaches

The Dynamic Effects of Blockchain-based Identity Management Adoption on Data Breaches

Sarah Mulombo Mulaji, Irwin Brown and Sumarie Roodt

University of Cape Town

Conference Paper

Collective Cargo Transport and Sorting with Molecular Swarms

Collective Cargo Transport and Sorting with Molecular Swarms

Nathanael Aubert-Kato¹

Geoff Nitschke ²

Ibuki Kawamata ³

Akira Kakugo ⁴

‍

¹Department of Information Sciences Ochanomizu University, Tokyo, Japan

²Computer Science Department University of Cape Town, South Africa

³Department of Robotics Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan

⁴Department of Physics Kyoto University, Japan

Conference Paper

A Computational Method to Support Chemical Product Design Based on Multi-objective Optimisation and Graph Transformers

A Computational Method to Support Chemical Product Design Based on Multi-objective Optimisation and Graph Transformers

Flavio S Correa da Silva ¹

Bilal Aslan ²

Geoff Nitschke ²

¹ Department of Computer Science, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil

² Department of Computer Science, University of Cape Town, South Africa

Conference Paper

The Impact of Morphological Diversity in Robot Swarms

The Impact of Morphological Diversity in Robot Swarms

Sindiso Mkhatshwa

Geoff Nitschke

University of Cape Town

Conference Paper

IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (SSCI)

Extreme Environments Perpetuate Cooperation

Extreme Environments Perpetuate Cooperation

Brandon Gower-Winter

Geoff Nitschke

Department of Computer Science, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

Conference Paper

Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC)

Towards Run-time Efficient Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning

Towards Run-time Efficient Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning

Sasha Abramowitz

Geoff Nitschke

Department of Computer Science, University of Cape Town, South Africa

Department of Computer Science, University of Cape Town, South Africa

Conference Paper

Evolving Gaits for Damage Control in a Hexapod Robot

Evolving Gaits for Damage Control in a Hexapod Robot

Christopher Mailer

Geoff Nitschke

Leanne Raw

University of Cape Town, South Africa