Associate ProfessorDemetris Christodoulou

BEcon Piraeus; MSc(Fin) York(UK); PhD AUEB

Demetris is Accociate Professor in Accounting, Governance and Regulation. He has a multi-disciplinary profile with a Bachelor in Economics with specialisation in Econometrics, a Master in Finance and a PhD in Accounting and Financial Analysis funded by the European Commission as part of the HARMONIA project on Accounting Harmonisation and Standardisation in Europe: Enforcement, Comparability and Capital Market Effects.

Demetris is interested in the application of data analytics, econometrics and data visualisation methods in financial research. His work has addressed the modelling of the financial reporting data generating process, which he has shown to be at odds with standard statistical conditions thus bringing into question established paradigms in empirical financial research. He has also worked in equity valuation, pricing, financial economics, capital market research in general and life insurance.

Demetris enjoys working with industry partners for finding viable data-driven solutions to real business problem. He is Scientific Director of a stratecic partnership with Deloitte for providing research solutions to companies. A large part of his current research is now focused to life insurance and financial advice. He has ongoing projects with major life insurers and workers compensation insurers in Australia, and in the past also in Canada.

Demetris is the co-Director of the PEMA research group. The aim of the group is to develop new data science methods and deploy advanced data analytics techniques for measuring and improving the productivity, efficiency and performance of organisations. Before that, he was the Director (2007-2022) of the Methological and Empirical Advances in Financial Analysis (MEAFA) research group. He was the chair of the annual MEAFA conference and directed a PhD exchange program with PennState University.

Demetris has a strong interest in designing advanced research training modules in quantitative analysis for industry and government researchers. His workshops have been widely recognised by the research community as state-of-the-art. He has provided research training on data analytics to more than a thousand of executives and practitioners. He also provided consulting services to the Australian Institute of Family Studies, the NSW Department of Communities and Education, the NSW Department of Trade and Investment, AusAID, NERA Economic Consulting, The George Institute for International Health, and the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, to help upskill their researchers in data analytics.

Demetris has trained hundreds of quant-minded PhD students over the years. He has provided PhD courses and training workshops at the University of Sydney, Melbourne University, the University of Technology Sydney, Griffith University, Macquarie University, the University of Canberra, the Financial Research Network, the University of Sussex, and the EU-wide INTACCT research network.

Demetris has maintained a close working relation with StataCorp at various levels for nore than 15 years. He has contributed open-source software components for Stata, and he is the author of the Graph Workflow website that promotes a structural approach to data visualisation using Stata. His online notes on data management using Stata was used by tens of thousands of subscribed researchers from 75 countries. He has served as chair and member of the scientific committe for the Oceania Stata meeting over the years, and was invited by StataCorp to contribute to the celebratory volume for Stata's 30 year anniversary.

Demetris generated $662,230 of net proceeds (from more than $1 million revenue) from organising and delivering Professional Development Workshops to industry and government in the Univeristy of Sydney. These funds were used to support the research activities of the MEAFA group and a PhD program. He received $105,000 from Kaplan for developing a course on behavioural finance and customer engagement that was used to meet acredidation requirements for qualified financial advisors. He also received several small-scale grants summing up to about $100,000.

Demetris has held previous research positions at the Athens University of Economics and Business, the University of Valencia School of Economics, and the Bangor Business School, and visiting professor posts at Columbia Business School and the University of Cyprus. He is also a member of the Behaviour.ai consulting group.

His spare time is dedicated to his children and sailing. He is actively involved in sailing development classes, and he is the co-creator of the sailing strategy game tacking duels.