Hosted by Alex and Conor.

Welcome to the UCD 2nd year Economics and Finance class.

Today, we are pleased to welcome Donal Rafferty, Director Product Development in Open Finance at Mastercard, Dublin.

Thank you for coming in to speak to us today, can you share a little of your own story?

· So, we’d like to start one of the ideas behind this series of talks. Do you think a finance professional’s working life will involve more or less interaction with dedicated development teams, IT or software engineers?

· Can you make a case for the value of knowing a bit about programming (e.g. python) for working in Finance.

· We are extremely interested in what you’ve learnt from experimenting with advanced aspects of LLMs, Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, agentic knowledge graphs, and process automation. What do you imagine is going to be the impact on the Finance industry?

· On your website you used the phrase “embedded finance” a couple of times, can you explain the concept?

· About your website, you said it was VIBE coded. What motivated you and what did you learn about the process?

With the time left we’d like to open it to questions from the audience…

Any recommendations for books, podcasts, blogs??

(questions from audience)

Before we finish, is there anything further you'd like to add?

Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your thoughts with us today.

Notes and further reading: Key books, articles, blogs, podcasts, channels

• https://www.donalrafferty.com
• Explore Kaggle for inspiring examples of data analysis - https://www.kaggle.com
• Learn Python and Pandas! There are many resources available, for example, DataCamp - https://www.datacamp.com
• The Unicorn Project and The Phoenix Project. Two books by Gene Kim about tech projects and working in tech.
• Andrew Ng’s AI education platform - https://www.deeplearning.ai/ Register for a free account to get access to Andrew’s videos. (in fact Andrew Ng coined the term “Agentic AI”, to describe a trend in how people were building applications)

Acknowledgements

Music

Title: First Take

Artist: Debajyoti Biswas and Michael O'Neill

Source: mis.aup3

License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Cover Art

Title: Complex collage

Artist: Allen Higgins

Source: DonalRafferty_Mastercard.pptx

License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Podcast License

Design Talk (dot IE) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The license can be viewed at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0

By taking part you give permission for your voice to be recorded, for the recording to be edited, and for it to be posted and published as a podcast.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the CITO Podcast.

This episode is a seminar by Quinn DuPont titled “Making New Money: How autonomous communities produce and govern cryptocurrencies.”

Paul Dylan-Ennis opens the session with a brief introduction after which Quinn presents an overview of his project, and Donncha Kavanagh makes some observations and invites reactions.

Decentralized cryptocurrencies are upending the foundations of economic power, challenging centuries of state and bank control over money. This research critically examines the rise of digital wildcat banking and its profound implications for economic sovereignty. Leveraging digital forensics, data science, and OSINT, this work reveals who actually produces and governs cryptocurrencies—and how their collective labor reshapes value and risk. It explores the forces behind decentralized money, the vulnerabilities these systems introduce, and the future role of state-issued currencies in an era of rapid monetary transformation.

Reflecting on the project Quinn notes:

"I've been working on this for well over a year now, and while it is still in development, the basic outline is complete. I make some pretty provocative claims, like arguing that global forces first emerging in the 1970s lead us inexorably to this point where the labour required to produce and govern new money has become involuted[1]. It’s a unique project that reveals how new money is made and details the implications for banks, nation states, and society. I also have some fun stories to share, like my effort to vampire attack Trump's WLFI token or my reverse engineering of the FBI's Operation Token Mirrors."

[1] Involution; the theory from Clifford Geertz where, in the original context, rice production becomes internally competitive and the processes require more labour without an increase in output - analogous to this story of technological development and precarious technological labour. I argue that the operational infrastructure of crypto expands to require more labour, despite no correlated increase in output. Thus, crypto overtakes national currencies not by meeting a market demand, but by accommodating excess labour supply.

Notes, extra questions, and further reading:

• Quinn’s homepage - https://iqdupont.com
• China’s “Involuted” Generation by Yi-Ling Lu | The New Yorker Published MAY 14
• The president and the billion-dollar crypto businesses – How the Trump companies made $1bn from crypto by Joe Miller and Alex Rogers in Washington, Paul Caruana Galizia, Nikou Asgari, Eade Hemingway, Oliver Hawkins and Chris Cook in London | FT.com Published OCT 16 2025
• "Overcapacity" or "involution"? How China's manufacturing suffers from over-competition Tracing the roots and perils by Elena Wang and Nina Chen | Baiguan.news Published APR 18 2024

Acknowledgements

Music

Title: CrazyMix

Artist: Sandbox Korg Ableton

Source: CrazyMix.aif

License: : CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Cover Art

Title: Inspired by Wordpress Defaults

Artist: Allen Higgins

Source: CITO-podcast-STS.pptx

License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Podcast License

Design Talk (dot IE) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The license can be viewed at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0

By taking part you give permission for your voice to be recorded, for the recording to be edited, and for it to be posted and published as a podcast.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our hosts for this episode are William Mugan and Grace Gunne from the BSc UCD Economics and Finance class.

Today, we are very pleased to welcome Jane Antova from IBM Consulting and colleagues Angela Stakelum and Bernadette Keating.

First, Jane, can you share a little of your own story and starting out in IBM?

So, what does a day in the life look like?

These days, do you find yourself needing more, or less interaction with technology specialists to get the job done?

Can you talk about typical sources of information and scale or size of datasets?

Can you talk about the tools used for modelling, economic simulations, machine learning, and use of AI?

Do you think that programming skills necessary or nice-to-have?

We have some time for questions from the audience…

Before we finish, is there anything further you'd like to add? (favourite pods, blogs, channels, books)

Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your thoughts with us today.

Notes, extra questions, and further reading:

IBM Skills Build - https://skillsbuild.org (free learning courses and resources)

PL/I – Programming Language One

Acknowledgements

Music

Title: First Take

Artist: Debajyoti Biswas and Michael O'Neill

Source: mis.aup3

License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Cover Art

Title: Complex collage

Artist: Allen Higgins

Source: JaneAntova-IBM.pptx

License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Podcast License

Design Talk (dot IE) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The license can be viewed at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0

By taking part you give permission for your voice to be recorded, for the recording to be edited, and for it to be posted and published as a podcast.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our hosts are Tara O’Reilly and Jack Kavanagh.

Welcome to the Economics and Finance class.

Today, we are very pleased to welcome Raul Afonso, Chartered Financial Analyst and Chief Economist at MFW (Multi Family Wealth). MFW is an investment firm providing investment services on managed accounts and investment funds.

Thank you for coming in to speak to us Raul. Can you share a little of your own story, how you came to Ireland and talk about the tools you use in your role as Economist and Financial Analyst?

[Raul opens with self-introduction and present some slides e.g. asset allocation, fund management, showcase doing analysis on output from Bloomberg]

I have a question; would you say that programming skills are necessary or just nice-to-have?

Could you share some key information sources you think we as Economics and Finance students should know about and follow?

With the time left we’d like to open it to questions from the audience…

(question from audience)

(question from audience)

Before we finish, is there anything further you'd like to add?

Well, this has been an informative talk. Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your thoughts and experience with us today.

Notes, extra questions, and further reading:

Key books mentioned?

Key pods, articles mentioned?

Other links…

Multi Family Wealth – the investment management company - https://mfw.ie

https://yardeni.com/charts/feds-stock-valuation-model/

https://www.ft.com/alphaville

https://www.zerohedge.com – the most famous blog in finance.

https://www.cfasociety.org/portugal/home

Acknowledgements

Music

Title: First Take

Artist: Debajyoti Biswas and Michael O'Neill

Source: mis.aup3

License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Cover Art

Title: Class vignette

Artist: Allen Higgins

Source: RaulAfonso.pptx

License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Podcast License

Design Talk (dot IE) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The license can be viewed at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0

By taking part you give permission for your voice to be recorded, for the recording to be edited, and for it to be posted and published as a podcast.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Design Talk. This episode resurrects a recording from the College of Business Intercultural Forum bite-sized workshop series, session 7. A conversation with Jacob Eisenberg and Allen Higgins on “adapting experiential learning to the digital classroom”. The talk was hosted by Kathleen O’Reilly and Linda Yang.

Key takeaways:

Students benefit from being in control of at least some of the settings within which learning experiences unfold so, consider using multiple apps rather than integrated systems, for example, separate the video presence experience (e.g. Zoom or Teams) from the digital whiteboard from the shared document.

• We should encourage experimentation with tools, old and new alike.
• Experiment with multiple means of engagement like polls, MCQs, discussion boards but feel free to drop a tool if you feel it doesn’t work well.
• Always be seeking copious feedback from learners all the time. The difficulties or challenges they encounter may be intrinsic to the learning process rather than problems to solve but just knowing where they are in the learning process is valuable; for example, are they stuck, is there a shared misunderstanding or misconception, or knowing who has made progress so they might act as a catalyst for the wider group.
• Use breakout rooms tactically to scale up and scale down groups to sizes appropriate to the activity.

Acknowledgements

Music

Title: Monologue Lu-Fugi octave climb with extra notes with wa wa with other tweaks

Artist: Allen Higgins

Source: introoutro

License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

License note: Includes derivative work from KORG Monologue/Sound presets by KORG Inc. permitted under Terms of Use (https://korg.shop/terms-of-use) Section 2: “Derivative works and their authors benefit in turn from the full protection of copyright without prejudicing the rights of the original work's author”.

Cover Art

Title: Complex collage

Artist: Allen Higgins

Source: vignette_version.pptx

License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Podcast License

Design Talk (dot IE) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The license can be viewed at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0

By taking part you give permission for your voice to be recorded, for the recording to be edited, and for it to be posted and published as a podcast.

Acknowledgements

Music

Title: Monologue Lu-Fugi octave climb with extra notes with wa wa with other tweaks

Artist: Allen Higgins

Source: introoutro

License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

License note: Includes derivative work from KORG Monologue/Sound presets by KORG Inc. permitted under Terms of Use (https://korg.shop/terms-of-use) Section 2: “Derivative works and their authors benefit in turn from the full protection of copyright without prejudicing the rights of the original work's author”.

Cover Art

Title: Complex collage

Artist: Allen Higgins

Source: vignette_version.pptx

License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Podcast License

Design Talk (dot IE) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The license can be viewed at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0

By taking part, you give permission for your voice to be recorded, for the recording to be edited, and for it to be posted and published as a podcast.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted by Christina Philips and Anabela Da Silva Filipe Soares.

Welcome to today’s seminar by Stefan Helfrich.

In this session Stefan talks about the education paths on offer for data analytics and the need for balance between learning concepts versus hands-on experiences with tools. Stefan makes the case for the value of visual workflow approaches for teaching and implementing analytics.

How do we do that? KNIME implements a well-documented, comprehensive and capable software environment that enables users to design and operate data analytics workflows visually using the following objects:

· Nodes perform tasks on data. Nodes have inputs and outputs. Nodes have status/indicators. Nodes are natively implemented in Java. Python scripts may also be used as code nodes.

· Connectors link nodes. Connectors indicate data flows. Connectors send data from one node to another. Connectors have direction. Nodes plus connectors enable you to create workflows.

· Workflows are designed aggregates of nodes linked using connectors

· Components/Metanodes encapsulate discrete sub-workflows. Component/metanodes can be used like nodes.

· A large library of pre-build nodes and metanodes are offered for common tasks like cleaning up data, visualization, plug into Tableau and PowerBI.

· Supports all types of data.

·

Further reading, sources, mentions and acknowledgements.

Stefan Helfrich -- https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefanhelfrich/

KNIME – https://www.knime.com/

See the KNIME Educators Alliance and the Teaching Materials Repository.

References:

Berthold, M. R. (2019). What Does It Take to be a Successful Data Scientist? Harvard Data Science Review, 1(2)

Further reading:

For examples, additional teaching materials, sample curriculum, see “The Data Science Guide” – www.datascienceguide.org

Unless otherwise noted, the teaching materials (including workflow examples, code examples, and slides) are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0).

Music

Title: Guitar House

Artist: josh pan (2020)

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL-LId8ZWBM

License: License CC BY 3.0

Cover Art

Title: We need You! Visual Analytics

Artist: Nuno Machado and Allen Higgins

Source: vignette_version.pptx

License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Podcast License

Design Talk (dot IE) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The license can be viewed at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0

By taking part you give permission for your voice to be recorded, for the recording to be edited, and for it to be posted and published as a podcast.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Design Talk.

In this episode I give a short talk titled “Doshite Nippon?” for Naonori sensei’s 'Gateways to Japan' discovery module at University College Dublin. The talk was recorded on April 1st 2025.

Kodate sensei is founding Director of the UCD Centre for Japanese Studies and Director of the Public Policy Programme in UCD.

Why Japan? I contend that it is good to experience the ordinary strangeness of a culture that is quite different to one’s own. My starting point is to consider the classic images of Japan after which I strive to give a flavour of what it is like to live and work there.

Notes

Naonori – https://people.ucd.ie/naonori.kodate

Allen – https://people.ucd.ie/allen.higgins

Gateways to Japan (DSCY10080)

JET – The Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme (see JET Ireland), established in 1987 and still running, invites third level graduates from overseas to participate in international exchange and foreign language education throughout Japan.

interac –Japan’s largest provider of ALTs (Assistant Language Teachers) https://interacnetwork.com

Japan Digital Nomad Association – https://japandigitalnomad.com/en/

Images:

四季と酒

shi ki to o-sake

These are: the four distinct seasons.

Haru (春) Springtime cherry blossoms.

Natsu (夏) The lush greenery of summer holidays, flowers, fruit and heat.

Aki (秋) Autumn when the leaves turn red and orange and gold.

Fuyu(冬) Winter cold (really cold), snow, and cosy indoors.

Add to this Japan’s visually striking architecture: Buddist temples (tera/-ji), Shinto shrines (jinja), Torii (gateways), and Castles (shiro/-jo) – former seats of power from the medieval period.

And not to forget – sake!

Acknowledgements

Music

Title: Check Them In

Artist: Ema Grace

Source: https://bit.ly/2tJ6Bnd

License: CC BY 4.0

Artist notes: Ema Grace is an AI vocaloid produced by Ryoma MAEDA (@Ryoma_Maeda). Styled as virtual Singer&Idol 架空のバーチャルアイドル & シンガー、それがEma Grace.

Cover Art

Title: Japan Digital Nomads

Credit: Japan Digital Nomads Association

Source: https://japandigitalnomad.com

License:

Podcast License

Design Talk (dot IE) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The license can be viewed at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0

By taking part you give permission for your voice to be recorded, for the recording to be edited, and for it to be posted and published as a podcast.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to today’s seminar by Marios Kremantzis.

In this session Marios presents current work related to two highly quantitative classes that have adopted a Chatbot as a teaching assistant. Two classes: Prescriptive Analytics” for the MSc Business Analytics programme and “Mathematics for Economists”, for the BSc Economics programme

Hosted by Christina Philips and Anabela Da Silva Filipe Soares.

Further reading, sources, mentions and acknowledgements.

‘AI Tutor Chatbots & Student Engagement’

Evaluating the Impact of AI Chatbots on Student Support and Engagement in UK Higher Education

Acknowledgements

Music

Title: Guitar House

Artist: josh pan (2020)

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL-LId8ZWBM

License: License CC BY 3.0

Cover Art

Title: Complex collaboration for BAEF

Artist: Nuno Machado and Allen Higgins

Source: vignette_version.pptx

License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Podcast License

Design Talk (dot IE) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The license can be viewed at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0

By taking part you give permission for your voice to be recorded, for the recording to be edited, and for it to be posted and published as a podcast.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.