Ruppa Thulasiram

Research and teaching interests

Capitalizing on my educational training in multiple fields I have been effectively doing research in an area that combines two historically established, technologically evolving, traditionally different fields: Computing and Finance where I have completed many projects successfully.

My expertise is in the emerging research areas of Computational Finance and Cloud Computing. Finance modelling requires a sophisticated level of mathematical and statistical knowledge, especially of stochastic partial differential equations, time series analysis, probability and measure theory to name a few. Analytical solutions for most of the finance models are rare and therefore numerical techniques are resorted.

My research focus is on the design, development, implementation, theoretical and experimental analysis of parallel algorithms for finance problems such as price prediction, derivative pricing and portfolio optimization that require special attention for robustness. The mathematical and physical behaviour of the financial systems range from very small to a large scale. This in essence makes the problem very large to handle. The multiscale nature of the finance problems is evident when using molecular simulation techniques. Financial applications are computationally intensive.

Another direction we are currently investigating using Blockchain technology is financial smart contracts. Current disruptive technological trends, especially in computing, such as Blockchain technology have been transforming the way transactions are done in almost every aspect of business, from banking to finance, from supply chain consumer industry to health.   We design smart contract(s) to demonstrate the viability and practicability of taking various investment positions using Blockchain technology. We have analyzed the contract for potential security vulnerabilities when implemented in Blockchain. These option-based smart contracts could be used for collateral contract services between finance industries.

I do teach courses in these specialized areas in addition to traditional computer science courses.