Dr. Giovanni Merola
Raised and educated in Rome, Italy, Giovanni completed a double major Bachelor degree in Statistics and Economics from the university La Sapienza in Rome. He completed his Masters and Ph.D. in Statistics at the University of Waterloo in 1994 and 1998, respectively. He was associate professor at the Polytechnic University of Catalunya in Spain, then moved to work in the area of Privacy Protection first at the National Statistics Office (ISTAT) in Rome and then at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in London, UK. He was employed for several years at a large hedge fund based in London, UK, researching systematic trading strategies for Futures. He returned to Academia in 2010, first at RMIT Vietnam and then at Xian Jiaotong-Liverpool University in China and later in India.
Giovanni’s research interests span from Multivariate Analysis to Privacy Protection and Statistical Learning, with a strong interest in computation, data analysis and visualization. He authored several refereed publications. He is proficient in programming, favouring the statistical language R and C++0, among others.
ACADEMIC QUALIFICATIONS
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Doctor of Philosophy (2004 – 2009), The University of Sydney, Australia
Thesis: Drawing on the Virtual Collective: Exploring Online Collaborative Creativity -
Master of Higher Education (1994 – 1998), The University of New South Wales, Australia
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Bachelor of Arts (Hons), Fine Arts (1981 – 1984), Bristol Polytechnic, England (UK)
PROFESSIONAL APPOINTMENTS
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Senior Lecturer, British University Vietnam (BUV), 2025 – Present
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Professor, Alliance University & MIT World Peace University (India), 2022 – 2023
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Lecturer V, Xian Jiaotong-Liverpool University (China), 2016 – 2022
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Senior Lecturer, RMIT University (Vietnam), 2010 – 2016
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Quantitative Analyst, Winton Capital Management, 2006 – 2009
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Senior Methodologist, ISTAT (Italy) & ONS (UK), 2002 – 2006
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Associate Professor, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Spain), 1999 – 2001
RESEARCH AREAS
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Multivariate Analysis
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Computational Statistics
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Machine Learning
RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS
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Merola, G. M. & Chen, G. (2019). Projection sparse principal component analysis: An efficient least squares method. Journal of Multivariate Analysis, 173, 366–382.
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McCauley, B., Gumbley, S., Merola, G. M. & Do, T. (2016). Facebook in Vietnam: Uses, Gratifications & Narcissism. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 4(11), 69–79. Link
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Merola, G. & Abraham, B. (2002). Dimensionality Reduction Approach to Multivariate Prediction. Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, Special Issue on PLS.
RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS & EXHIBITIONS
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62nd ISI World Statistics Congress, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (2019)
Topic: Improved estimation of wealth indices from asset counts -
61st ISI World Statistics Congress, Marrakech, Morocco (2017)
Topic: High-frequency financial time series, pattern recognition and volatility -
International Symposium on Business and Industrial Statistics (ISBIS), Bangkok, Thailand (2012)
Topic: A new framework for measuring disclosure risk for tabular data
RESEARCH GRANTS
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2019 – Summer Undergraduate Research Framework Grant, Xian Jiaotong-Liverpool University
Project: Analysis of Chinese stock prices with respect to risk reward – 5,000 RMB -
2019 – Research Development Fund, Liverpool University
Project: Reducing the effect of data clumping in the estimation of wealth indices – 60,400 RMB
Collaborators: Dr. Bob Baulch (IFPRI, Malai), Prof. Marco Bonetti (Bocconi, Italy), Dr. Yang Chen (XJTLU) -
2012 – Personal Grant, Italian Institute for Commerce, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Project: Analysis of the perception of “Made in Italy” in Vietnam – 20,000 USD
Collaborator: Dr. Mattia Miani
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