This course focuses on applying statistical modeling, machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI) methods—particularly large language models (LLMs)—to blockchain-based financial systems. Students will explore the use of these technologies in: Predictive modeling of crypto assets, Anomaly detection in decentralized finance (DeFi), Transaction graph analytics, Smart contract evaluation, Blockchain-based risk assessment. Emphasizing data-driven research, the course makes extensive use of real-world blockchain datasets from sources such as Quantinar, Dune Analytics, Etherscan, and Flipside Crypto. Through lectures and applied labs, students will formulate, implement, and evaluate models that capture the complexity of digital finance systems built on distributed ledger technologies. The course positions students at the forefront of quantitative blockchain analytics, with practical exposure to ML frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, scikit-learn), financial time series analysis, and the responsible use of LLMs for interpretability, auditing, and compliance in DeFi.
09:30 – 10:00 → Registration
10:00 – 10:15 → Welcome and Introduction
10:15 – 11:15 → CBDC Stress Tests in a Dual Currency Setting – (Cătălin Dumitrescu)
11:30 – 12:30 → Central Bank Digital Currencies - an academic research on the potential design for digital LEU – (Raluca Micu)
13:30 – 14:30 → Crypto and Stablecoins Stress Test – (Cătălin Dumitrescu)
14:50 – 16:30 → Project: description and coding
09:50 – 10:00 → Welcome remarks – (Joerg Osterrieder)
10:00 – 11:00 → Adapting SHAP to trustworthy window changes – (Raul Cristian Bag)
11:20 – 12:20 → Early warning systems for cryptocurrency markets: Predicting ’zombie’ assets using machine learning – (Piotr Wójcik)
13:30 – 14:30 → How Much Power was Saved in ETH Merge? – (Wolfgang Karl Härdle)
14:50 – 16:30 → Discussion panel: prospects and barriers of Blockchain in digital finance
10:00 – 11:00 → A Graph-Theoretic Framework for Predicting Implied Volatility Surfaces in Crypto Option Markets – (Radu Lupu)
11:20 – 12:20 → On-chain data sources: a practical guide – (Owen Chaffard)
13:30 – 14:30 → Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS) application in Romania – (Adrian Costea)
14:40 – 15:40 → Students Seminar Session
16:00 – 17:00 → Students Seminar Session
17:00 – 18:00 → Project: updates
10:00 – 11:00 → Central Banking and AI – (Antoaneta Amza)
11:20 – 12:20 → The Intelligent Skewness Factor – (Dan Gabriel Anghel)
13:30 – 14:30 → Crypto-Asset Narratives in Romanian Financial News: A Topic and Sentiment Analysis – (Claudia Voicilă)
14:50 – 15:50 → Day-ahead Forecasting for Redispatch Measures using Machine Learning – (Vlad Bolovăneanu)
Speaker: Oros Alexandra and Claudia Petrescu
10:00 – 10:20 → Welcome & Introductions
10:20 – 10:50 → Defining Scope in Research
11:00 – 11:30 → Planning Under Uncertainty
11:30 – 12:00 → Governance & Stakeholder Management
12:20 – 12:50 → Managing Research Execution
14:00 – 14:30 → Risk & Failure Management
14:30 – 15:00 → Deliverables in Research Projects
15:20 – 16:20 → Lessons Learned & Research Maturity
16:20 – 16:30 → Horizon Europe Framework
13:00 - 16:00 → Final Group Presentations (Online)
Adrian Costea
Bucharest University of Economic Studies
Antoaneta Amza
National Bank of Romania
Cătălin Dumitrescu
Stratum Finance
Claudia Petrescu
The Research Institute for Quality of Life, Romanian Academy
Claudia Voicilă
National Bank of Romania
Dan Gabriel Anghel
Bucharest University of Economic Studies
Daniel Traian Pele
IDA Institute Digital Assets, Bucharest University of Economic Studies; Institute for Economic Forecasting, Romanian Academy, Romania
Joerg Osterrieder
Coordinator MSCA Digital Finance
Oros Alexandra
Omnisource Technologies; PMI Romania
Owen Chaffard
Cardo AI; University of Kaiserslautern-Landau
Piotr Wójcik
University of Warsaw, Poland
Radu Lupu
IDA Institute Digital Assets, Bucharest University of Economic Studies; Institute for Economic Forecasting, Romanian Academy, Romania
Raluca Micu
TOKEN Financial Technologies Romania
Raul Cristian Bag
Institute of Digital Assets, Bucharest University of Economic Studies
Vlad Bolovăneanu
Bucharest University of Economic Studies
Wolfgang Karl Härdle
IDA Institute Digital Assets, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Romania
Daniel Traian Pele is a Prof. dr. Department of Statistics and Econometrics Faculty of Cybernetics, Statistics and Economic Informatics, The Bucharest University of Economic Studies. https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=tN32HYcAAAAJ&hl=en