Professor Fethi Rabhi
PhD in Computer Science, University of Sheffield, UK (1990).
Professor, School of Computer Science and Engineering. My main role is in conducting research projects as well as teaching subjects in Computer Science, Software Engineering and Information Systems. Besides my academic role, I am actively engaged in facilitating University-industry collaborations particularly in the context of financial applications. My existing projects are in the areas of financial markets, wealth management and regulatory reporting.
- Publications
- Media
- Grants
- Awards
- Research Activities
- Engagement
- Teaching and Supervision
I have obtained in total almost $4M in grants as a first investigator since joining UNSW in 2000 in four important blocks of funding:
- Fintech AI (2015-present): investigating novel AI applications with a number of partners in the financial industry as well as Data61. Industry partners include Westpac, AWS, Ignition Advice, BrewAI, Capsifi and Cognitivo.
- Smart Services CRC (2010-2014): applying service technologies in the areas of media, finance and health in partnership with Suncorp, SAP and Sirca.
- Ad-hoc DAta Grid Environments (2007-2010): prompted by a large DEST Innovation Science Linkage (ISL) grant to investigate the use of service technologies for analyzing ad-hoc data grids (news and financial information).
- Capital Markets Cooperative Research Centre (2001-2007): I was the Interoperability Sub-Program Manager with SIRCA, SMARTS and Computershare as industry partners.
My research interests are in Software Engineering, Design Methods, Service-Oriented Computing, High Performance Computing, Web Technologies and Applications in Business, Finance and Economics (E-Business, Financial Trading, Electronic Markets and Banking). I am currently focusing on investigating innovative software engineering approaches for the development of AI applications in the business domain. In November 2022, I co-founded the Fintech AI Innovation Consortium (FAIC), a new initiative that builds on UNSW's strength in digital innovation technologies and AI applications and is driven by both the Engineering and Business faculties.
I have engaged in different activities with various organisations in the following areas:
- Software Enginering for Analytics and AI Systems: the provision of efficient software services for Big Data Analysis has enormous socio-economic benefits for many companies in different sectors
- Analytics for Business and Social Sciences: addressing the fact that big data analysis in Business and Social Sciences is mainly driven by non-IT specialists analysing vast amounts of ad-hoc data from different sources such as Web logs, network traffic messages, health sensors and financial reports means that work in areas as diverse as IoT, Health, Economics and Social science is important
- FinTech: initiating projects in areas that would be considered too high risk for any start-e.g. developing innovative products that are not necessarily for-profit, creating open data repositories, financial planning tools, personalized banking hubs, dealing with educational issues, developing products for financial literacy and encouraging financial inclusion in a way that would benefit the entire society and encouraging openness, transparency and compliance with rules and regulation.
My Research Supervision
Large scale analysis of business information (Joint project with UNSW School of Management)
My Teaching
- I am recognized as one of the few people with a broad knowledge of software engineering, encompassing not only the technical aspects but also the management aspects (30 years of teaching experience equally distributed between Engineering and Business faculties). I have also experience in developing software both as part of research and consulting activities.
- I am a champion of multidisciplinary activity-based learning through workshops and software based activities performed both in-person and on-line
- Many software products developed as a result of research projects have been used to support teaching activities at different levels (workshops, specialised courses for PhD students and Honours projects).
- I have been a pioneer in developing new teaching material at the junction between the area of IT and Finance.