Selected Publications

Over the last couple of years, Bitcoin cryptocurrency and the Blockchain technology that forms the basis of Bitcoin have witnessed a flood of attention. In contrast to fiat currencies used worldwide, the Bitcoin distributed ledger is publicly available by design. This facilitates observing all financial interactions on the network, and analyzing how the network evolves in time. We introduce a novel concept of chainlets, or Bitcoin subgraphs, which allows us to evaluate the local topological structure of the Bitcoin graph over time. Furthermore, we assess the role of chainlets on Bitcoin price formation and dynamics. We investigate the predictive Granger causality of chainlets and identify certain types of chainlets that exhibit the highest predictive influence on Bitcoin price and investment risk.
In PaKDD, 2018

Bitcoin and its underlying technology Blockchain have become popular in recent years. Designed to facilitate a secure distributed platform without central authorities, Blockchain is heralded as a paradigm that will be as powerful as Big Data, Cloud Computing and Machine learning. Blockchain incorporates novel ideas from various fields such as public key encryption and distributed systems. As such, a reader often comes across resources that explain the Blockchain technology from a certain perspective only, leaving the reader with more questions than before. We will offer a holistic view on Blockchain. Starting with a brief history, we will give the building blocks of Blockchain, and explain their interactions. As graph mining has become a major part its analysis, we will elaborate on graph theoretical aspects of the Blockchain technology. We also devote a section to the future of Blockchain and explain how extensions like Smart Contracts and De-centralized Autonomous Organizations will function. Without assuming any reader expertise, our aim is to provide a concise but complete description of the Blockchain technology.
Tutorial on Arxiv.org, 2017

Teaching

University of Central Florida

  • CAP 5619, AI for Finance, Spring 2024. FinTech MS students, 50+ students.
  • CIS 5730, Blockchain and Smart Contracts, Summer 2024. FinTech MS students, 50+ students.

University of Manitoba

  • COMP 4190, Advanced Artificial Intelligence, Winter 2021. Core undergraduate course, 40+ students.
  • COMP 2140, Data Structures and Algorithms, Winter 2020 and Winter 2021. Core undergraduate course, 90+ students.
  • COMP 7570, Blockchain Data Analytics, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, and Fall 2021. Graduate elective course, 25 students.

University of Texas at Dallas

  • CS 6313, Statistical Methods for Data Science, Fall 2018 and Spring 2019. Core course for Data Science specialization, 150+ students.

Università degli Studi dell’Insubria

  • Data Analysis with R, Spring 2013. Master’s level course, 13 students.
  • Privacy and Security of Data, Spring 2012. Master’s level course, 11 students.

Invited and Online Courses

  • Applications of topology in online social networks and Blockchain networks, Instituto de Matemáticas de la Universidad de Sevilla, Spain, May 22–26, 2023. Videos: part 1, part 2, and part 3.
  • Data Science on Blockchains, Udemy MOOC course.

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