Duration
5 years full time
Mode (Location)
On campus (Parkville)
Intake
July
Key dates
Key dates
Fees
Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) places available
Learn more
Learn more
Student experience
Overview
At MBS, we offer a comprehensive program to support your learning, develop your skills and enrich your degree. We encourage you to be involved both on and off campus, and to make the most of your time outside the classroom.
Internships
As a part of the PhD, students can undertake a Research Internship. These paid opportunities will allow you to strengthen transferable skills and expand your professional networks, while engaging in research and development (R&D) activities with an external organisation.
Top-Tier Research & High-Quality Teaching
PhD candidates in the Doctoral Program in Decision Risk and Financial Sciences undertake research at the Centre for Brain, Mind and Markets.
The Centre for Brain, Mind and Markets provides an inter-disciplinary platform for research and research-training in human and machine decision-making in complex environments. The Centre is located in the Department of Finance in the Faculty of Business and Economics but operates across the University and affiliated institutes. Find out more about the Centre via the below link.
Centre for Brain, Mind and Markets
Professor Carsten Murawski
Decision, Risk and Financial Sciences Graduate Research Co-Director
Carsten Murawski is the Director of the Centre for Brain, Mind and Markets and the Co-Director of the Doctoral Program in Decision, Risk and Financial Sciences.
Carsten uses laboratory experiments to study individual decision-making, in particular, its neurobiological basis. The current focus of his work is on determining in what ways information processing constraints in the brain affect decision-making, how they lead to phenomena such as cognitive biases and how decision-making can be improved. A primary area of Carsten’s current research is the role of complexity in decision-making. He is a pioneer in linking computational complexity theory with decision theory to identify and quantify resource requirements of decisions.
Before joining the University of Melbourne, Carsten was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Zurich. He has been a visiting researcher at New York University and at Columbia University, New York. He has taught at The University of Melbourne, the University of Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich. He was trained in investment banking at JP Morgan in New York and has spent several years in the finance industry. Carsten holds a PhD from the University of Zurich, Switzerland and a Master’s degree from the University of Bayreuth, Germany.
Dr Nitin Yadav
Decision, Risk and Financial Sciences Graduate Research Co-Director
Nitin Yadav is the Co-Director of the Doctoral Program in Decision, Risk and Financial Sciences and a senior lecturer in computational finance.
His work involves the study of the complexity of decision making (in particular NP-Hard problems) and the application of techniques from computer science and artificial intelligence to problems in finance. Nitin’s other research interests lie in the areas of service composition, intelligent agent systems, and use of formal techniques for testing agent designs.
Nitin obtained his PhD in Computer Science from RMIT University in 2014 and worked as a research fellow in the agents group there before joining The University of Melbourne. He also holds a Bachelor degree in Medicine and Surgery, a Master degree in Computer Science with a specialisation in artificial intelligence, and a Master degree in Finance.
Student experience
Harvey Huang
PhD in Decision, Risk and Financial Sciences, completed 2023
Harvey Huang completed the Doctoral Program in 2023. In the profile linked below, he discusses his interdisciplinary research interests and the support he has received from the Centre for Brain, Mind and Markets.
"The Centre operates slightly differently from a typical economics and finance PhD program, verging on social science programs. There are numerous opportunities to learn and uplift your skills. We have weekly journal clubs to discuss cutting-edge research. We also have semester-long coding workshops covering essential technical skills like R, Python, Latex and Git."
Pablo Franco
Principal Investigator at the Centre for Brain, Mind and Markets
Pablo Franco completed the Doctoral Program in 2021. He is now a Research Fellow with the Melbourne Early Career Academic Fellowship (MECAF) program and a Principal Investigator at the Centre for Brain, Mind and Markets. His general research interests lie at the intersection of human decision-making and neuroscience.
"I chose the University of Melbourne because of its unique, highly interdisciplinary doctoral program in Decision Neuroscience, targeted at students especially interested in experimental research in decision-making, which today, draws on so many different disciplines including economics, psychology and computer science."