AI for FinTech Research Lab (Completed)

A collaboration between Delft University of Technology and ING.

The AI for FinTech Research (AFR) Lab centers its research on three core themes: software analytics, search-based software engineering (autonomous coding), and data analytics/integration.

 

To drive these advancements, the lab leverages key technical AI components, focusing primarily on:

 

  • Artificial Intelligence

  • Computational Intelligence Algorithms

  • Machine Learning

  • Metaheuristics

 

With a commitment to developing integrated, scalable systems designed for intelligent quality assurance, automated vulnerability testing, and autonomous software engineering.

Sustainable Development Goals

About the lab

The AFR is dedicated to bridging the gap between technical AI research and large-scale practice in the context of FinTech.

 

The lab’s mission and vision are to perform world-class research at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence, Data Analytics, and Software Analytics to develop new AI-driven theories, methods, and tools for high-volume data and software environments.

 

The impact of the lab lies in accelerating a comprehensive software and data-driven transformation. This is achieved by pursuing Shneiderman’s “Twin-Win” model to validate AI breakthroughs directly within the live, global IT infrastructure of ING, fostering young scientific entrepreneurship through integrated Bachelor and Master programs, and embedding autonomous, highly predictable engineering frameworks to achieve operational excellence across the digital financial ecosystem.

Research projects

Software analytics – Focuses on using AI and machine learning across automated pipelines to transform software engineering into a more predictive, evidence-based ecosystem.

Search-based software engineering – Search-Based Software Engineering: Focuses on utilizing evolutionary algorithms and machine learning for autonomous coding, automated test suite generation, and vulnerability testing.

Analytics delivery – Focuses on designing and optimizing scalable data engineering pipelines to handle large-scale, intensive AI processing and data transformation.

Data integration – Focuses on developing machine learning techniques to automate schema matching and data discovery, automatically linking thousands of separate data sources.

Continuous experimentation – Focuses on incorporating A/B testing as a service directly into the deployment pipeline to systematically capture and feed user experiences back to developers.

Publications

AI for FinTech Research Lab

2025

Kula, E.

Modeling Effort Estimation and Planning in Large-Scale Agile Software Development PhD Thesis

Delft University of Technology, 2025, (Preprint).

BibTeX

2024

Kula, E.; Deursen, A.; Gousios, G.

Context-Aware Automated Sprint Plan Generation for Agile Software Development Proceedings Article

In: Proceedings of the 39th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering, 2024, (ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award).

Links | BibTeX

Siachamis, G.; Christodoulou, G.; Psarakis, K.; Fragkoulis, M.; Deursen, A.; Katsifodimos, A.

Evaluating stream processing autoscalers Proceedings Article

In: Proceedings of the 18th ACM International Conference on Distributed and Event-based Systems, 2024, (Preprint).

BibTeX

Kapel, E.; Cruz, L.; Spinellis, D.; Deursen, A.

On the Difficulty of Identifying Incident-Inducing Changes Proceedings Article

In: Proceedings of the 46th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice (ICSE-SEIP), 2024, (Preprint).

BibTeX

Poenaru-Olaru, L.; Karpova, N.; Cruz, L.; Rellermeyer, J. S.; Deursen, A.

Is Your Anomaly Detector Ready for Change? Adapting AIOps Solutions to the Real World Proceedings Article

In: Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM 3rd International Conference on AI Engineering-Software Engineering for AI, 2024, (Preprint).

BibTeX

Siachamis, G.; Psarakis, K.; Fragkoulis, M.; Deursen, A.; Carbone, P.; Katsifodimos, A.

CheckMate: Evaluating Checkpointing Protocols for Streaming Dataflows Proceedings Article

In: IEEE 40th International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE), 2024, (Preprint).

BibTeX

Kapel, E.; Cruz, L.; Spinellis, D.; Deursen, A.

Enhancing Incident Management: Insights from a Case Study at ING Proceedings Article

In: Proceedings of the 1st IEEE/ACM Workshop on Software Engineering Challenges in Financial Firms (FinanSE), 2024.

Links | BibTeX

Salimzadeh, S.; Gadiraju, U.

“DecisionTime”: A Configurable Framework for Reproducible Human-AI Decision-Making Studies Proceedings Article

In: Adjunct Proceedings of the 32nd ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization, 2024.

Links | BibTeX

Salimzadeh, S.; Gadiraju, U.

When in Doubt! Understanding the Role of Task Characteristics on Peer Decision-Making with AI Assistance Proceedings Article

In: Proceedings of the 32nd ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization, 2024, (Preprint).

BibTeX

Salimzadeh, S.; He, G.; Gadiraju, U.

Dealing with Uncertainty: Understanding the Impact of Prognostic Versus Diagnostic Tasks on Trust and Reliance in Human-AI Decision Making Proceedings Article

In: Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2024, (Preprint).

BibTeX

Altmeyer, P.; Farmanbar, M.; Deursen, A.; Liem, C. C. S.

Faithful Model Explanations through Energy-Constrained Conformal Counterfactuals Proceedings Article

In: Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2024, (Preprint).

BibTeX

Salimzadeh, S.

Living in the Age of AI: Understanding Contextual Factors that Shape Human-AI Decision-Making PhD Thesis

Doctoral Thesis, 2024.

BibTeX

2023

Poenaru-Olaru, L.; Sallou, J.; Cruz, L.; Rellermeyer, J. S.; Deursen, A.

Retrain AI Systems Responsibly! Use Sustainable Concept Drift Adaptation Techniques Proceedings Article

In: IEEE/ACM 7th International Workshop on Green And Sustainable Software, GREENS 2023, 2023, (Preprint).

BibTeX

Poenaru-Olaru, L.; Cruz, L.; Rellermeyer, J. S.; Deursen, A.

Maintaining and Monitoring AIOps Models Against Concept Drift Proceedings Article

In: IEEE/ACM 2nd International Conference on AI Engineering - Software Engineering for AI, CAIN 2023, 2023, (Preprint).

BibTeX

Kapel, E.

Incident Prevention Through Reliable Changes Deployment Proceedings Article

In: IEEE/ACM 45th International Conference on Software Engineering: Companion Proceedings (ICSE-Companion), 2023, (Preprint).

BibTeX

Altmeyer, P.; Angela, G.; Buszydlik, A.; Dobiczek, K.; Deursen, A.; Liem, C. C. S.

Endogenous Macrodynamics in Algorithmic Recourse Proceedings Article

In: 2023 IEEE Conference on Secure and Trustworthy Machine Learning (SaTML), 2023, (Preprint).

BibTeX

Salimzadeh, S.; He, G.; Gadiraju, U.

A Missing Piece in the Puzzle: Considering the Role of Task Complexity in Human-AI Decision Making Proceedings Article

In: Proceedings of the 31st ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization, 2023, (Preprint).

BibTeX

Siachamis, G.; Kanis, J.; Koper, W.; Psarakis, K.; Fragkoulis, M.; Deursen, A.; Katsifodimos, A.

Towards Evaluating Stream Processing Autoscalers Proceedings Article

In: 2023 IEEE 39th International Conference on Data Engineering Workshops (ICDEW), 2023.

BibTeX

Siachamis, G.; Psarakis, K.; Fragkoulis, M.; Papapetrou, O.; Deursen, A.; Katsifodimos, A.

Adaptive distributed streaming similarity joins Proceedings Article

In: Proceedings of the 17th ACM International Conference on Distributed and Event-based Systems, 2023, (Preprint).

BibTeX

Petrescu, S.; Hengst, F. Den; Uta, A.; Rellermeyer, J. S.

Log parsing evaluation in the era of modern software systems Proceedings Article

In: 2023 IEEE 34th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE), 2023, (Preprint).

BibTeX

Applis, L.; Panichella, A.; Marang, R.

Searching for Quality: Genetic Algorithms and Metamorphic Testing for Software Engineering ML Proceedings Article

In: Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, 2023, (Preprint).

BibTeX

Applis, L.; Panichella, A.

HasBugs-Handpicked Haskell Bugs Proceedings Article

In: 2023 IEEE/ACM 20th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR), 2023, (Preprint).

BibTeX

Kula, E.; Greuter, E.; Deursen, A.; Gousios, G.

Dynamic Prediction of Delays in Software Projects Using Delay Patterns and Bayesian Modeling Proceedings Article

In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE), 2023, (Preprint).

BibTeX

2022

Kula, E.; Greuter, E.; Deursen, A.; Gousios, G.

Factors Affecting On-Time Delivery in Large-Scale Agile Software Development Journal Article

In: IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, vol. 48, no. 9, pp. 3573–3592, 2022, (Preprint).

BibTeX

Poenaru-Olaru, L.; Cruz, L.; Deursen, A.; Rellermeyer, J. S.

Are Concept Drift Detectors Reliable Alarming Systems? A Comparative Study Proceedings Article

In: IEEE International Conference on Big Data, 2022, (Preprint).

BibTeX

Chuang, C. C.; Cruz, L.; Dalen, R. Van; Mikovski, V.; Deursen, A.

Removing dependencies from large software projects: are you really sure? Proceedings Article

In: 2022 IEEE 22nd International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM), 2022, (Preprint).

BibTeX

Zhang, H.; Cruz, L.; Deursen, A.

Code smells for machine learning applications Proceedings Article

In: Proceedings of the 1st international conference on AI engineering: software engineering for AI (CAIN), 2022, (Preprint).

BibTeX

Altmeyer, P.; Deursen, A.; Liem, C. C. S.

Explaining Black-Box Models through Counterfactuals Proceedings Article

In: Proceedings of JuliaCon, 2022, (Preprint).

BibTeX

Hengst, F.; François-Lavet, V.; Hoogendoorn, M.; Harmelen, F.

Reinforcement Learning with Option Machines Proceedings Article

In: International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2022, (Preprint).

BibTeX

Hengst, F.; François-Lavet, V.; Hoogendoorn, M.; Harmelen, F.

Planning for potential: efficient safe reinforcement learning Journal Article

In: Machine Learning, 2022.

Links | BibTeX

Oort, B.; Cruz, L.; Loni, B.; Deursen, A.

Experiences in Analysing the Software Quality of ML Projects with mllint Proceedings Article

In: 44th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2022), Software Engineering in Practice (SEIP), 2022.

BibTeX

2021

Siachamis, G.; Houben, G. J. P. M.; Deursen, A.; Katsifodimos, A.

Integrating Massive Data Streams Proceedings Article

In: Proceedings of the VLDB 2021 PhD Workshop, 2021, (Preprint).

BibTeX

Salimzadeh, S.; Maxwell, D.; Hauff, C.

The Impact of Entity Cards on Learning-Oriented Search Tasks Proceedings Article

In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGIR International Conference on the Theory of Information Retrieval (ICTIR), 2021, (Honorable Mention for Best Student Paper; Preprint).

BibTeX

Kula, E.; Deursen, A.; Gousios, G.

Modeling Team Dynamics for the Characterization and Prediction of Delays in User Stories Proceedings Article

In: Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering, 2021.

BibTeX

Leij, D.; Binda, J.; Dalen, R.; Vallen, P.; Luo, Y.; Aniche, M.

Data-Driven Extract Method Recommendations: A Study at ING Proceedings Article

In: ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE), 2021, (Preprint).

Links | BibTeX

Haakman, M.; Cruz, L.; Huijgens, H.; Deursen, A.

AI Lifecycle Models Need to be Revised: An Exploratory Study in Fintech Journal Article

In: Empirical Software Engineering, 2021, (Preprint).

Links | BibTeX

Koutras, C.; Siachamis, G.; Ionescu, A.; Psarakis, K.; Brons, J.; Fragkoulis, M.; Lofi, C.; Bonifati, A.; Katsifodimos, A.

Valentine: Evaluating Matching Techniques for Dataset Discovery Proceedings Article

In: 37th IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE), 2021.

Links | BibTeX

Koutras, C.; Psarakis, K.; Siachamis, G.; Ionescu, A.; Fragkoulis, M.; Bonifati, A.; Katsifodimos, A.

Valentine in Action: Matching Tabular Data at Scale Journal Article

In: Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment, vol. 14, 2021, (Preprint).

BibTeX

Oort, B.; Cruz, L.; Aniche, M.; Deursen, A.

The Prevalence of Code Smells in Machine Learning projects Proceedings Article

In: WAIN’21 - 1st Workshop on AI Engineering – Software Engineering for AI, 2021, (Preprint).

Links | BibTeX

Xie, Y.; Cruz, L.; Heck, P.; Rellermeyer, J. S.

Systematic Mapping Study on the Machine Learning Lifecycle Proceedings Article

In: WAIN’21 - 1st Workshop on AI Engineering – Software Engineering for AI, 2021, (Preprint).

Links | BibTeX

Applis, L.; Panichella, A.; Deursen, A.

Assessing Robustness of ML-Based Program Analysis Tools using Metamorphic Program Transformations Proceedings Article

In: Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE), 2021, (Preprint).

BibTeX

2020

Hengst, F.; Grua, E. M.; Hassouni, A.; Hoogendoorn, M.

Reinforcement Learning for Personalization: A Systematic Literature Review Journal Article

In: Data Science, 2020.

Links | BibTeX

Huijgens, H.; Rastogi, A.; Mulders, E.; Gousios, G.; Deursen, A.

Questions for Data Scientists in Software Engineering: A Replication Proceedings Article

In: Proceedings of the 28th ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/SIGSOFT FSE), pp. 568–579, 2020, (Preprint).

BibTeX

2019

Hengst, F.; Hoogendoorn, M.; Harmelen, F.; Bosman, J.

Reinforcement Learning for Personalized Dialogue Management Proceedings Article

In: IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence (WI 2019), 2019, (Preprint).

Links | BibTeX

Kula, E.; Rastogi, A.; Huijgens, H.; Deursen, A.; Gousios, G.

Releasing Fast and Slow: An Exploratory Case Study at ING Proceedings Article

In: ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE), 2019, (Preprint).

Links | BibTeX

Huijgens, H.; Greuter, E.; Brons, J.; Doorn, E. A.; Papadopoulos, I.; Martinez, F. M.; Aniche, M.; Visser, O.; Deursen, A.

Factors Affecting Cloud Infra-Service Development Lead Times: A Case Study at ING Proceedings Article

In: Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE): Software Engineering in Practice (SEIP), 2019, (Preprint).

Links | BibTeX

Akhter, A. U.; Fragkoulis, M.; Katsifodimos, A.

Stateful functions as a service in action Journal Article

In: Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment, 2019.

Links | BibTeX

2018

Huijgens, H.; Spadini, D.; Stevens, D.; Visser, N.; Deursen, A.

Software Analytics in Continuous Delivery: A Case Study on Success Factors Proceedings Article

In: ESEM ’18: Proceedings of the 12th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, 2018, (Preprint).

Links | BibTeX

People

Partners

ING is a global financial institution of Dutch origin. ING provides financial services such as banking, investments, life insurance and pensions.

Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) is a technical university in Delft. Top education and research are at the heart of the oldest and largest technical university in the Netherlands.

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