Tālis Putniņš is a Professor of Finance at the University of Technology Sydney and the Chief Scientist of the Digital Finance CRC.
He has published widely about market design, financial market microstructure, and market integrity/misconduct. His research all ties back to the central question of how can we make markets work better? Tālis has provided consulting and policy expertise on these topics for government agencies, stock exchanges, and financial institutions. He has also served as an expert witness in legal cases.
Tālis has focused on technology-driven opportunities and challenges in finance. This includes automation in markets and advanced aspects of financial market design, such as high-frequency and algorithmic trading and the role of transparency and dark trading in markets. He has collaborated with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) in these areas as well as market operators in several jurisdictions.
More recently, his research is focused on the digital finance toolkit – how distributed ledgers, tokenisation of assets, and decentralised markets can be used. He has worked on new market architectures and developed novel approaches to detecting and profiling illegal activity of various forms in cryptocurrency and digital asset markets. These methods have gained attention from law enforcement authorities including AUSTRAC (Australia’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing agency), the Australian Federal Police, ASIC, and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), among others.
The position of Chief Scientist in the CRC is complemented by highly experienced research leads across technology and law faculties at our university partners. The Chief Scientist is also responsible for the oversight of the postgraduate teaching activities that form a core part of the education and training programs.
Tālis holds a Bachelor of Finance and a Bachelor of Engineering (Information Technology and Telecommunication) with First Class Honours and the University Medal from the University of Adelaide. In 2010, Tālis was awarded a PhD in Finance from the University of Sydney and was promoted to a professorship in 2015. He has held visiting and honorary positions at Columbia University, New York university, the University of Edinburgh and Stockholm School of Economics in Riga.