Keynote Speakers

 

Professor Matthias Fuchs
Professor of Business Administration, faculty of Economics and Management,
Free University of Bolzano, Italy.
Director of the Competence Centre for Sustainable Tourism, Brunico, Italy

Matthias Fuchs, Ph.D., was tenured in Business Administration at University of Innsbruck, Austria in 2003. Subsequently, he was the director of the e-Tourism Competence Center Austria located at Innsbruck, Austria. From 2008 until June 2024, Matthias worked as a Full Professor of Tourism Management & Economics at Mid Sweden University, Östersund, Sweden. Since July 2024, Matthias holds the position of a Full Professor of Business Administration at the faculty of Economics and Management at Free University of Bolzano, Italy. He is also the director of the Competence Centre for Sustainable Tourism, located at Brunico, Italy. Matthias’ main research interests include digital transformation in the tourism domain with a focus on big data and business intelligence applications, such as topic detection and sentiment analysis based on tourists’ online feedback. Moreover, Matthias’ research interests comprise network analyses and input output methodologies for conducting socio-economic impact analysis in tourism. Matthias also steered relevant studies in the field of customer-based destination brand equity. Finally, Matthias developed critical epistemologies grounded on Buddhist philosophy to foster more just and regenerative types of tourism (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2023.103688). Recently, Matthias’ research interests also cover the assessment of tourism’s contribution to sustain regional circular economies. Prof. Matthias Fuchs is Associate Editor of the Journal of Information Technology & Tourism. Matthias is also the co-editor of the recently published Springer Handbook of e-Tourism (https://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-3-030-48652-5). Finally, Prof. Matthias Fuchs serves the editorial board of the Journal of Travel Research, Annals of Tourism Research, Tourism Analysis, and the Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Management.

 

Professor Fredj Jawadi
Professor of Finance, University of Lille, France 
Fellow of the Society for Economic Measurement

Fredj Jawadi is Professor of Econometrics and Finance (Professeur des Universités) and the Director of the Master CGAO at the University of Lille (France), and he was an Associate Professor at the University of Evry-Paris Saclay from 2010 to 2018, and an Assistant Professor at Amiens School of Management from 2006 to 2010. Currently, he is an Associate Researcher at EconomiX-CNRS (University of Paris Nanterre) and a Deputy Director for CAC (Cliometrics and Complexity Team at IXXI Complex Systems Institute, http://www.ixxi.fr/?p=3219) in France. In addition, he is an Officer of the Society for Economic Measurement in the U.S. (http://sem.society.cmu.edu/home.html ), and a Research Fellow at the Economic Research Forum (ERF) in Egypt. He is a Fellow of the Society for Economic Measurement (elected in June 2018) https://sem.society.cmu.edu/SEM_Fellows.asp. He is also a Charter Fellow at the Institute for Nonlinear Dynamical Inference (INDI) in Russia since 2015. He has been a Visiting Scholar or Professor at the University of Chicago, Emory University, University of Kansas, University of Liverpool, University of Ljubljana, University of Greenwich, and University of Gent since 2009.

His research interests are: Empirical Finance and Applied Econometrics. He has over 100 papers published in various International Journals including: Annals of Operational Research, Applied Economics, Computational Economics, Econometric Reviews, Economic Modelling, Finance, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Journal of International Financial Markets Institutions and Money, Journal of Financial Markets, Journal of Macroeconomics, Journal of Risk and Insurance, Macroeconomic Dynamics, Quaterly Review of Economics and Finance, Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Revue d'Economie Politique, Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics and Econometrics, The Energy Journal, etc. I’ve co-authored and co-edited several books and book chapters for Chapman Hall / Francis and Taylor, Emerald Group Publishing, Elsevier, McGraw-Hill, Palgrave Macmillan, Springer, World Scientific, etc.

He has also served as an Associate Editor or a Subject Editor to the following Journals: Computational Economics (since 2016), Emerging Market Review (since 2016), Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money (since 2015), Macroeconomic Dynamics (since 2014), Research in International Business and Finance (since 2014), and Economic Modelling (since 2013). Additionally, he has co-edited several special issues for different national and international journals in Economics and Finance.

Lastly, he is the Co-Organizer of two International Conferences: The first one covers topics on Computational Economics (International Symposium in Computational Economics and Finance (www.iscef.com ), while the second one looks at the recent developments in financial and nonlinear econometrics: International Workshop on Financial Markets and Nonlinear Dynamics (www.fmnd.fr). He was also the Co-Chair of the SEM (Society for Economic Measurement) 's Second Conference (Paris, July 22-24, 2015). He was the Co-chair the 25th Annual Symposium of the Society for Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics: http://snde2017.essec.edu/home that was organized in Paris on March 30-31, 2017, with ESSEC.

 

Professor Behzad Behdani
Professor in Supply Chain and Operations Management
USN School of Business, University of South-Eastern Norway

Behzad Behdani is a Professor in Supply Chain and Operations Management at the Department of Business, Strategy, and Political Science, University of South-Eastern Norway. He also leads Collaborative Innovation, Societal Transformation, and Operations Management (CISOM) at the USN School of Business. Behzad has done significant research on some ground-breaking aspects of operations and supply chain management, including supply chain analytics and operations management at early-stage innovative companies (the link between innovation/technology management and operations management) and global intermodal logistics. His current research is focused on smart manufacturing and logistics, particularly how digital technologies help transform the existing business models in the logistics sector. Behzad’s research also deals with how we can embed the UN Sustainable Development Goals in the design and operations of global logistics systems. Behzad’s research has been published in leading academic journals in the field of supply chain and logistics management, including IJPE, IJPR, CAIE, TRE, and Transport Reviews, among others. He has served on the editorial board of the World Review of Intermodal Transportation Research and Strategic Planning for Energy and the Environment Journal. He has been involved in organizing several conferences, including International Conference on Computational Logistics, and served on the guest editorial team of several special issues.
 

Invited SpeakerS

 

Associate Professor Eric Benhamou
Head of R&D and Machine Learning, AI for Alpha; Department of Mathematics & Information Technologies, Université Paris-Dauphine, PSL, France

A graduate of École Polytechnique and ENSAE Paris, Éric Benhamou holds three doctorates—in Economics (London School of Economics), Mathematics (Université Paris-Est École des Ponts et Chaussées) and Computer Science (Paris-Dauphine). He began his career at Goldman Sachs in quantitative finance, then headed Natixis’s quantitative research team, developing advanced derivatives-pricing models. In 2007, he co-founded Pricing Partners, a fintech pioneer in independent OTC derivatives valuation, and lately in 2020 co-created AI for Alpha, where he oversees R&D, building “decoding” algorithms that replicate hedge-fund and private-equity strategies in transparent, liquid formats.
At Paris-Dauphine, he teaches machine learning, deep reinforcement learning, and quantitative finance. His research focuses on AI-driven portfolio allocation in non-stationary markets, replication of illiquid investment strategies, and sentiment-based signal extraction for trading and risk management. Prof. Benhamou has authored over 100 papers in leading journals and conferences, spoken at major industry forums (including the MathFinance Conference, ECML PKDD, and many leading ML conferences), and serves on editorial boards for several machine-learning-in-finance venues. He is currently ranked 4th among more than 30,000 authors on SSRN by download volume.

 

Professor Larisa Ivascu
Politehnica University of Timisoara, Romania

Dr. Larisa IVASCU (Ph.D. in Engineering and Management; MBA; B.S. in Software Engineering) is a vice-rector for financial policies and entrepreneurship at Politehnica University of Timisoara. She is a full professor at the Faculty of Management in Production and Transportation, Department of Management, having more than 20 years of experience in programming, teaching and research. Professor Ivascu is the director of Research Center for Engineering and Management, the president of the scientific committee of the Academy of Political Leadership, and vice-president of the Society for Ergonomics and Work Environment Management. Larisa was the head of the Entrepreneurship Office of Politehnica University of Timisoara. She has extensive academic work: she has published 11 books, and 15 chapters in national and international books, coordinated the editing of 11 books at internationally recognized publishing houses, and written over 320 academic research studies or articles, being also part of international research bodies. Dr. Larisa is a guest editor of important journals, a keynote speaker to various international and national events, part of the national and international entrepreneur and academic projects and visiting professor at prestigious universities.