Fall Semester 2026

Simon Fraser University

Instructor: Oliver Schulte

Breadth Area III

Course Logistics

Office Location: TASC 1 9021.

Office Phone: 778-782-3390.

Office Hours: Wednesday 3 pm-4 pm in CSIL lab.

TAs: Abdolreza Mirzaei

TA Office Hours: TBD

Announcements

Course Information

• Syllabus. Updated September 9, 2026.
• Course Notebook. I've created a OneNote notebook for the course material.
• Google LLM Notebook with course readings
• Canvas Page. Quizzes (and only quizzes) will be managed through the course canvas page.
• SFU Self-Declaration Form.

Plan for the Course

The course has two parts.

1. Background on Payment systems, cryptocurrencies. Discusses the technical foundations and use cases for payment systems, particularly crytocurrencies and managing assets on the blockchain.
2. Large language models and AI. Much current research at the intersection of AI and finances explores the potential of large language models to support financial services by analysing financial texts.

A popular topic that is out of scope are applications of AI to trading financial assets, such as valuing options and picking stocks. For learning more about finance beyond this course, I highly recommend Robert Shiller's Open Yale introduction. Shiller is the winner of a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. His introductory lecture (linked) discusses worthwhile careers in Finance. For career advice, see also Laura Cha's guest lecture.

Information for Topic Presentations

This is a seminar course, so students are expected to cover part of the course material in presentations and discussions. Every student must contribute one presentation about a graph learning topic. Depending on the course progress, there may be an option to give two presentations. More details about the topic presentation.

Information for Projects

I ask you to complete the a project as a group for the following reasons.

1. Discussing topics with other students will help you understand them.
2. Having help with the project will lead to a better grade.
3. You can tackle a more ambitious projects.

A group should have 3 members. Each project group will contribute two project components.

1. A project outline presentation for your course project: introduce the problem, related work/material, describe your plan of attack. More details here.
2. A final project presentation about the results of your course project. More details here.

Signing up for topic presentations

Please use this section to sign up for a project presentation. The tentative course schedule is in the Course Notebook. Please put down your name and the topic you would like to cover.

• Week 1. Sep 9.
• Week 2. Sep 14, 16.
• Week 3. Sep 21, 23
• Week 4. Sep 28. Example (not real, this slot is still free): Alexei & Philip (Hash Functions). Jasleen (Cryptography)
• Week 5. Oct 5, 7.
• Week 6. Oct 14.
• Week 7. Oct 19, 21.
• Week 8. Oct 26, 28.
• Week 9. Nov 2, 4.
• Week 10. Nov 9.
• Week 11. Nov 16, 18.
• Week 12. Nov 23, 25.