Fintech and AI
Fall Semester 2025
Simon Fraser University
Instructor: Oliver Schulte
Breadth Area III
Course Logistics
Office Location: TASC 1 9021.
Office Phone: 778-782-3390.
Office Hours: Wednesday 1 pm-2 pm in person.
TAs: Tristan Engst and Abdolreza Mirzaei
TA Office Hours: Tristan (Fridays 2–3pm, after we start LMs, Zoom info on Canvas) | Abdolreza (Fridays 2–3pm, Zoom info on Canvas)
Course Staff Email: Currently we are working out issues. Undergrads: cmpt-419-d3@sfu.ca Grads: cmpt-983-d3@sfu.ca | (for now: if you aren't getting a reply within 36H please search SFU outlook and send to both TA emails)
Announcements
- Homework 1 is available. If the link does not work, go to Notebook.Blockchain.Homework 1 in the class notebook.
- Homework 2 is available. If the link does not work, go to Notebook.Computer Science Foundations.Homework 2 in the class notebook.
- Blockchain Programming Assignment If the link does not work, go to Notebook.Smart Contracts.Assignments in the class notebook.
Course Information
- Syllabus. Updated September 8, 2021.
- Course Notebook. I've created a OneNote notebook for the course material.
- Google LLM Notebook with course readings
- Canvas Page. Graded class participation will be managed through the course canvas page.
- SFU Self-Declaration Form.
Plan for the Course
The course has two parts.
- Background on Payment systems, cryptocurrencies. Discusses the technical foundations and use cases for payment systems, particularly crytocurrencies and managing assets on the blockchain.
- 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.
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
You have the option of completing a project as a group, and I encourage you to do so, for the following reasons.
- Discussing topics with other students will help you understand them.
- Having help with the project will lead to a better grade.
- You can tackle a more ambitious projects.
A group should have at most 3 members. Each project group will contribute two project components.
- A project outline presentation for your course project: introduce the problem, related work/material, describe your plan of attack. More details here.
- 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 3.
- Week 2. Sep 8, 10.
- Week 3. Sep 15, 17
- Week 4. Sep 22, 24. Guest lecture Peter Chow-White, Communications (11:30 am on Monday). Alexei & Philip (Hash Functions). Jasleen (Cryptography)
- Week 5. Sep 29, Oct 1. Guest Lecture Frederick Willeboordse, Beedie. Yihe Liu & Xiang Feng (smart contract), Renwei Deng & Yuefeng Huang (Automated Market Maker on Smart Contract)
- Week 6. Oct 6, 8. Isa Nafieiev (central Bank digital currencies) Tyrus Tracey (Stablecoins)
- Week 7. Oct 15. Barry Gao (Central Bank Currencies) Manan Tiwari & Deep (Public Policy and Issues)
- Week 8. Oct 20, 22. Oct 20: Guest Lecture Ajit Desai BISIH. Bank of International Settlements. Noble(Real time payment systems) Kyle & Don (LLMs for Financial Reporting)
- Week 9. Oct 27, 29. Lauren & Gurleen (LLMs for Finance), Thang (LLMs for Finance)
- Week 10. Nov 3, 5. Bhavya, Chi & Rojin (LLM - Enhancing Financial Sentiment Analysis via Retrieval Augmented Large Language Models), Wenhao Tian & Enze Jiang(RAG & Fine-Tuning of LLM)
- Week 11. Nov 10, 12. Jerry & Tarek (llm security in finance)
- Week 12. Nov 17, 19. Wesley (multi-modal LLMs) Janet (Financial LLM)