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Ahmed Mahrous

Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science, KAUST
ahmed.mahrous@kaust.edu.sa · ORCID

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Research interests

machine learning; economics; decentralized finance.

Education

• Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science, KAUST. GPA: 3.89/4.00. Advisor: Roberto Di Pietro.
  Thesis: Learning and Strategic Behavior in Decentralized Financial Systems.
• M.Sc. in Finance, Qatar University, 2023. GPA: 4.00/4.00.
• B.Sc. in Business, with a focus on Finance and Information Systems. GPA: 3.93/4.00.

Awards and scholarships

• Best Student Paper Award, IEEE IDSTA.
• CEMSE Dean’s List, KAUST.
• KAUST Fellowship, fully funded doctoral fellowship.
• Graduate Student Research Award (GSRA), Qatar National Research Fund, full master’s scholarship.
• Order of Excellence Award, Qatar University’s highest undergraduate academic honor.
• Full Undergraduate Scholarship.

Selected publications and accepted papers

1. Ahmed Mahrous and Roberto Di Pietro. The reflexivity threshold: A phase transition for multi-agent performative prediction. NeurIPS 2026 · Accepted, 2026.

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2. Ahmed Mahrous, Maurantonio Caprolu, and Roberto Di Pietro. Stablecoins: Fundamentals, emerging issues, and open challenges. International Review of Economics & Finance, 111, 105665, 2026.

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3. Ahmed Mahrous, Jens Schneider, and Roberto Di Pietro. FinMoji: A framework for emoji-driven sentiment analysis in financial social media. ACM Transactions on the Web, 20(3), Article 35, 2026.

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4. Ahmed Mahrous and Roberto Di Pietro. Cross-cultural transfer of emoji semantics and sentiment in financial social media. Findings of ACL 2026, 2026.

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5. Ahmed Mahrous and Roberto Di Pietro. What prediction-market contracts reveal at launch: Trading volume and dispute risk. ACM International Conference on AI in Finance (ICAIF 2026) · Accepted, 2026.

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6. Ahmed Mahrous and Roberto Di Pietro. PumpSense: Real-time detection and target extraction of crypto pump-and-dumps on Telegram. IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (ICBC 2026), 2026.

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7. Ahmed Mahrous and Roberto Di Pietro. TSTR for financial fraud: Learning to detect manipulation without real data. ACM International Conference on AI in Finance (ICAIF 2025), 2025.

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8. Ahmed Mahrous, Maurantonio Caprolu, and Roberto Di Pietro. SoK: A structured analysis of economic and technical stablecoin-related research. IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (ICBC 2025), 2025.

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9. Ahmed Mahrous and Roberto Di Pietro. Demystifying the role of aesthetics in NFT pricing: Model, analysis, and insights. International Conference on Blockchain Computing and Applications (BCCA 2025), 2025.

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10. Lanouar Charfeddine and Ahmed Mahrous. What drives cryptocurrency pump and dump schemes: Coin versus market factors?. Finance Research Letters, 67, 105861, 2024.

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11. Ahmed Mahrous, Jens Schneider, and Roberto Di Pietro. The role of emojis in sentiment analysis of financial microblogs. Fourth International Conference on Intelligent Data Science Technologies and Applications (IDSTA 2023), 2023.

    Best Student Paper Award

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Teaching and service

Teaching assistant for Introduction to Cybersecurity and Introduction to Cryptography, M.Eng. program, KAUST.

Conference reviewer: ICAIF, NeurIPS, and ICBC.

Journal reviewer: Financial Innovation; Blockchain: Research and Applications; Computer Networks.