Machine learning for finance, business and the public sector.

I am a Reader in the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering at the University of Essex, and Faculty Dean (Postgraduate) for the Faculty of Science and Health. I develop machine learning and evolutionary computation methods for finance, business and the public sector, and I have led around 30 funded projects with industry and public bodies since 2020.

I lead a research group of ten PhD students, with eight completions at Essex and Kent. I was nominated for PhD Supervisor of the Year at Essex from 2022 to 2024.

News

  • 2026New paper in Artificial Intelligence Review on machine learning for temperature forecasting in weather derivatives.
  • 2025Ivan Evdokimov and George Rayment completed their PhDs.
  • 2025Started a Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Trinity House and the General Lighthouse Authorities.
  • 2025Became a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
  • 2024Our partnership with ESNEFT won Best Partnership: Public Sector at the Essex Innovation Awards.

Selected roles and recognition

  • Chair, IEEE Computational Finance and Economics Technical Committee (2020–2021)
  • General Chair, IEEE CIFEr (2022)
  • Member, UKRI Talent Peer Review College (2023 to present)
  • Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and Senior Member of the IEEE
  • Best Partnership: Public Sector, University of Essex Innovation Awards (2024), for work with ESNEFT
  • External examiner for programmes at Kent, Southampton, Aberdeen, Goldsmiths and Westminster

Previously I was a Lecturer at the University of Kent (2012–2020) and a Research Assistant at Essex on BT projects. I hold a PhD in Computer Science and an MSc in Computer Studies from Essex, and a BSc in Economics from the University of Athens.

Featured work

More case studies
[Photo: hospital theatre or scheduling dashboard]

Healthcare, ESNEFT, 2022 to 2024

Helping the NHS cut waiting lists

With East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust, we used machine learning to predict how long operations will take, so theatre lists can be planned more accurately.

Best Partnership: Public Sector, Essex Innovation Awards 2024

Read the case study

[Photo: lighthouse or buoy]

Maritime, GLA and Trinity House, 2021 to present

Keeping the lights on at sea

Since 2021 we have worked with the General Lighthouse Authorities on machine learning and machine vision that help spot faults in lighthouses and other aids to navigation early.

Six projects and a KTP since 2021

Read the case study

How can I help?

Prospective PhD students

Trading, deep RL, LLMs for finance and forecasting. See what to send me.

Join the group

Industry and public sector

KTPs, consultancy and sponsored PhDs that turn your data problem into a working system.

Work with me

Media and events

Comment and talks on AI in finance, algorithmic trading and applied AI in industry.

Media and talks

What I work on

All research

Genetic programming for trading

Directional changes, multi-objective strategies and sentiment signals.

Deep RL for high-frequency trading

Trading agents that account for their own position and for costs.

LLMs, NLP and speech

Financial filings, sentiment signals and efficient speech models.

Forecasting

Weather derivatives, real estate and company fundamentals.

AI for the public sector

Maritime safety and NHS theatre scheduling.

Latest publications

All publications

  1. Barnor, N., Kampouridis, M., Kanellopoulos, P. (2026). Machine Learning for Temperature Forecasting in Weather Derivatives. Artificial Intelligence Review, Springer.

    Journal article PDF BibTeX

  2. Salman, O., Melissourgos, T., Kampouridis, M. (2026). A genetic algorithm for the optimization of multi-threshold trading strategies in the directional changes paradigm. Artificial Intelligence Review, Vol 59:2, Springer.

    Journal article PDF BibTeX

  3. Long, X., Kampouridis, M., Papastylianou, T. (2025). Multi-Objective Genetic Programming-based Algorithmic Trading, using Directional Changes and a Modified Sharpe Ratio Score for Identifying Optimal Trading Strategies. Artificial Intelligence Review, Springer.

    Journal article PDF BibTeX

Organisations I have worked with

General Lighthouse Authorities, Trinity House, ESNEFT, Cooper Parry, Centerprise, Horus Security, IFE Global Logistics, Hivedome.

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