University: University of Technology Sydney
Principal supervisor:
Jianlong Zhou
Industry partner: ANZ
Academic Background and Work Experience
Régnier completed his undergraduate degree in Computer Science at Griffith University with a major in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. Subsequently, he started his research undertaking at UTS, where he started with a master by research and upgraded to a PhD degree in 2023. His main research interests are Blockchain Forensics, Knowledge Graphs, Network Analysis, and Graph Machine Learning.
Thesis Topic
Adversarial Robustness of Money Laundering Detection Systems in the Digital Asset Ecosystem
For a large-scale institutional adoption of digital assets, effective anti-money laundering solutions are essential. Institutions like the ANZ must assure regulators that they have appropriate risk management when dealing with digital assets. Money Laundering is an adversarial problem where criminals try to outsmart the controlling side. Data-driven detection methods are vulnerable to targeted evasion attacks. Hence, research addressing the adversarial robustness of such systems is relevant for institutions inside the digital asset ecosystem.
About ANZ
Australian and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) is one of the major banks in Australia offering a vast array of financial services from retail to institutional banking. They are keen to expand their service portfolio from traditional financial solutions to decentralised finance (DeFi). ANZ is a pioneer in the DeFi space, being the first bank to mint a digital asset linked to the Australian dollar, the A$DC stablecoin. They are looking at novel services that can benefit from distributed ledger technology.
What part of the business is the researcher involved in?
Digital Assets
What questions/problems is the researcher helping to answer/solve?
Regnier is working with his industry supervisor to scope out potential research questions which will be valuable to the business.