Professor · Finance and Financial Technology
Helping institutions, regulators and investors understand digital assets and AI in finance.
Apostolos Kourtis is a Professor at the Institute For the Future and the Department of Digital Innovation of the University of Nicosia. His work focuses on finance and financial technology, with expertise in digital-asset markets, agentic finance, portfolio management and forecasting. He teaches on the University’s MSc in Blockchain and Digital Currency.
His research has been published in leading international peer-reviewed journals and featured in international media outlets, including the Financial Times and Bloomberg. He has developed forecasting and optimization frameworks that organisations have used to inform investment, business and policy decisions. His current research interests include tokenized markets, sustainable blockchain systems and the intersection of blockchain and artificial intelligence. He serves on the editorial boards of Forecasting and the Journal of the British Blockchain Association.
Previously, he was Associate Professor in Finance and Head of the Finance Group at Norwich Business School, University of East Anglia. He is a Visiting Researcher in Financial Forecasting at Durham University. He holds a PhD in Finance from the Athens University of Economics and Business, an MSc in Applied and Computational Mathematics from the University of Oxford and a BSc in Mathematics from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He is a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy.
His work combines financial economics with quantitative methods, with a growing focus on how blockchain and artificial intelligence reshape markets and financial decision-making.
Pricing, market structure and adoption of crypto-assets, tokenized assets and digital art, including the timing of ESG-aligned blockchain adoption.
Selected work: Journal of the Operational Research Society (2025); Economics Letters (2024). Specialised crypto-asset training for the Cyprus Financial Intelligence Unit (2026). Commissioned study on blockchain for energy distribution networks, HEDNO (2021).
How AI agents, combined with blockchain infrastructure, take part in financial decision-making, and how they can be deployed responsibly.
Co-investigator, Horizon Europe project Using Artificial Intelligence to Support Regulators & Policymakers, on trustworthy AI for financial services. Leads the MSc course AI, Blockchain and Agentic Finance.
Portfolio choice under estimation error, skewness and trading costs, and the risk and diversification of alternative and sustainable investments.
Selected work: Journal of Banking and Finance (2012); Financial Review (2015); Journal of Empirical Finance (2014); International Review of Financial Analysis (2012).
Volatility, covariance and price forecasting in financial and energy markets, built to support investment and policy decisions.
Selected work: Journal of Banking and Finance (2018); Journal of Futures Markets (2016). Commissioned study on electricity price volatility, HEDNO (2023). Electricity consumption forecasting for a major European operator (2024).
Alongside his academic work, he undertakes consultancy, commissioned research, expert advice, independent model review and executive education for public bodies, regulated industries and financial organisations. Selected engagements:
He has taught finance from first-year undergraduate to Executive MBA level. His teaching covers six themes:
For research collaboration, doctoral supervision, invited talks or advisory and commissioned research, please get in touch by email.
kourtis.a@unic.ac.cyInstitute For the Future and Department of Digital Innovation, School of Business, University of Nicosia, Cyprus