A/ProfChristina Nikitopoulos Sklibosios

Christina Nikitopoulos is an experienced researcher in energy finance, renewable energy, sustainable finance, commodity markets and interest rate modelling.

Christina’s research projects develop mathematical frameworks and conduct empirical studies to analyse the dynamics of prices and volatilities in crude oil, gold, electricity and energy markets. Her research has addressed important aspects and issues associated with commodity/energy markets, such as the financialization of commodity markets, the return-volatility relation in commodity markets, the pricing and hedging of commodity derivatives and the economic determinants of oil futures markets volatility.

She leads several projects addressing the impact of renewable energy generation on electricity price dynamics that aim to inform the debates regarding the system’s security and reliability, and to provide context on the notion of a renewable-led energy transition. This research informs policy makers, governments, electricity generation developers and consumer groups.

Her research portfolio also includes sustainable finance projects addressing the challenges of fossil fuel divesting and the evaluation of the premium in green bond markets. This research assesses the risk and return characteristics of fossil fuels and renewables, and investigates realistic portfolio construction strategies to inform the optimal method of reduction in carbon exposure. Further, her projects identify and gauge effects of attribute associations of green bond yield spreads offering screening mechanisms to facilitate decision making for investors, issuers and policy makers.  

Christina is included as an expert in Funding and Financial Services at the CSIRO Enabling Resilience Investment Panel. She is a member of several research associations and centres including the Centre of Climate Risk and Resilience (CCRR), Centre for Business and Sustainable Development (CBSD), Financial Research Network (FIRN), and the Australian Accounting & Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand (AFAANZ). 

Internationally, she is a member of the Commodity and Energy Markets Association (CEMA), the Academic Female Finance Committee (AFFECT), and the International Association of Energy Economics (IAEE).

Christina has been awarded two ARC grants; one on modelling and estimation of volatility in energy markets (2010-2013) and one on risk assessment of climate change measures (2013-2017). She has recently been awarded a UTS Collaborative Scheme grant (2025) on Next-Gen AI platform to enable smart home electrification, and the UTS Strategic Research Accelerator (SRA) grant (2024-2025) on developing a decision-making and benchmarking tool to assist corporations achieving their net-zero goals. Other grants incude a Dean's Strategic Fund Collaboration and Networking grant (2023), a CBSD Research Partnership grant (2023-2024) on green bonds.

Christina publishes in leading finance journals including the Journal of Banking & Finance, Energy Economics, Quantitative Finance, Applied Mathematical Finance and The Journal of Futures Markets.