Dr Richard Bean

Complete curriculum vitae

Summary

Energy market analyst and data scientist with 25 years’ experience across industry, government and academia. At Energy Exemplar I develop and enhance PLEXOS (electricity-market simulation software) electricity market models for Western Australia (WA), the Northern Territory (NT) and the National Electricity Market (NEM) for government and private clients, building on market modelling and forecasting roles at ROAM Consulting, AEMO and Redback Technologies and a Research Fellowship at UQ’s Centre for Energy Data Innovation. Won the Forecasting Prize (first for forecast accuracy) and placed second overall in the IEEE-CIS Predict+Optimize international energy forecasting competition. Author of 56 scholarly publications whose findings have been covered by media in more than ten languages.

These works have attracted 4,068 citations, with an h-index of 18 (18 papers cited at least 18 times each) and an i10-index of 29 (29 papers cited at least ten times each), including one paper cited more than 700 times. Source: Google Scholar, September 2026.

Contact cv-2026@richardbean.id.au

Google Scholar https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=HxfGta4AAAAJ
ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1723-6760
Wikidata https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q77885229
Wikipedia (DE) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Bean_(Kryptoanalytiker)
Google Knowledge Graph https://www.google.com/search?kgmid=/g/11qq7yj812
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardbean
GitHub https://github.com/RichardBean
IEEE Xplore https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/author/37086514359
UQ Expert Profile https://about.uq.edu.au/experts/24473

Education

Ph.D. Mathematics, 1998 - 2001. The University of Queensland, Department of Mathematics. Thesis: Critical Sets in Latin Squares and Associated Structures (arXiv:2606.12996; abstract published in the Bulletin of the Australian Mathematical Society, 66(1), 2002, pp. 175–176).

B.Sc. (First Class Honours and University Medal) Computer Science and Mathematics, 1994 - 1997. The University of Queensland.

Employment

Senior Energy Market Analyst, Energy Exemplar, September 2024 – current.

I develop and enhance PLEXOS models for external clients and assist potential clients with navigating the features and interface of PLEXOS (pre-sales).
I led the significant enhancement of Energy Exemplar’s models for the Western Australian Wholesale Electricity Market (WEM) adding the DFCM (Dynamic Frequency Control Model) and ancillary-services trapezia: constraints that represent how a generator can supply energy and frequency-control services together. This approach can be used in PLEXOS in WA, NT and NEM markets.
I updated the internal Japan model and work closely with AEMO and clients in WA and NT (both private and government). The implementation work is to more closely model the real-world operation of each market subject to time and resource limits of the client.

Research Fellow (July 2019 – June 2023), then Affiliate and casual academic (July 2023 – current), University of Queensland.
Affiliate, University of Newcastle, July 2021 – current.

In the Centre for Energy Data Innovation, I led the collection and analysis of large amounts of energy data collected from meters; in particular from a 20,000 device setup in Queensland installed by Luceo Energy working with Energy Queensland. I perform clustering and forecasting using the data and set up an observatory to share anonymized data publicly with researchers. I won the Forecasting Prize and placed second overall in an IEEE international energy forecasting competition for solar generation and building energy use at Monash. I developed models and performed data analysis for the Gas and Energy Transition Research Centre and the School of Business.
Published extensively on the cybersecurity of energy data; the influence of land use, weather and temporal variables, gender, and hilliness on international bike sharing schemes and e-scooter schemes; breaking unsolved historical classical ciphers with modern techniques; and improving previous results in combinatorics and graph theory. Regularly published on “The Conversation” website to explain my research to the general public. I used C, R, Python, SQL and Gurobi for development.

Data Scientist, Redback Technologies, July 2016 – June 2019.

Prediction of solar and load data on a large network of inverters. Development of algorithms in R for battery scheduling and optimization, embedded network operation and virtual power plants. Data cleaning, outlier detection and statistical analysis.

Senior Epidemiologist, Preventive Health Branch, Queensland Health, July 2015 – June 2016.

Analysis of survey data and burden of disease data for the biennial Chief Health Officer’s Report and other reports. STATA programming.

Senior Research Officer, Health Protection Branch and Communicable Diseases Branch, Queensland Health, December 2015 – June 2016.

Epidemiology of food-borne illness outbreaks involving salmonella and campylobacter

Advanced Research Officer, Health Protection Unit/Branch, Queensland Health, February 2014 – December 2015.

Analysis of public health data and report preparation; finding public health datasets to perform preventative health programs rather than reactive health programs; administration of Department of Health’s ArcGIS Online system; developing and analysing public health targets and key performance indicators. Health areas included asbestos, lead, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, food-borne illnesses, medicines and poisons, and water programs. Analysing epidemiology of food-borne illness outbreaks and statistical analysis of areas including asbestos and food.

Senior Analyst, Australian Energy Market Operator, February 2013 – June 2013.

Reviewing AEMO’s National Electricity Forecasting Report data and models
Assessing the impact of mandatory electricity restrictions and analysing weather correction models

Senior Analyst, ROAM Consulting, April 2007 – December 2012.

Mathematical modelling of the Australian NEM (National Electricity Market) and New Zealand Electricity Market (NZEM).
Writing reports on market forecasting and analysis for a wide range of commercial and government clients
Development of statistical methodologies for assessing reliability in interconnected power systems; detailed analysis of outages of power stations and their effect on reliability in the 2010 Minimum Reserve Levels project
Programming in Microsoft VBA, C++, writing spreadsheets in Excel and maintaining databases in Access, including SQL work.

Research Officer, Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland, December 2003 - March 2007.

Postdoctoral Associate, Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, Tehran, Iran, April 2002 - October 2003.

Lecturer, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Department of Mathematics, Second Semester 2002.

Research Assistant and Officer (Statistics), Department of Mathematics, University of Queensland April 2001 - March 2002.

Developing and optimizing algorithms related to graph theory, combinatorics, operations research, and statistics; analysing microarray data.
Programming in C, Fortran, Matlab, R, and Python

Publications

Book Chapters

R. Bean, S. Snow, X. Li, M. Glencross, A. Chapman (2025). Machine learning for energy management. Research Handbook on Energy Management (Edward Elgar), ed. R. Madlener and V. Bertsch, pp. 123-159.
R. Bean, Y. Zhang, R. K. L. Ko, X. Mao, and G. Bai (2022). Preserving the privacy and cybersecurity of home energy data. Emerging Trends in Cybersecurity Applications, Springer, pp. 323–343.
D. Pojani, J. Chen, I. Mateo-Babiano, R. Bean, and J. Corcoran (2020). Docked and dockless public bike-sharing schemes: research, practice and discourse. Handbook of Sustainable Transport, Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 129–138.
G. J. McLachlan, R. W. Bean, S-K. Ng (2017) Clustering. Bioinformatics Vol. II: Structure, Function, and Applications (Methods in Molecular Biology, vol. 1526), Humana Press, pp 345—362.
G. J. McLachlan, R. W. Bean, S-K. Ng (2008) Clustering. Bioinformatics, volume 2: Structure, function and applications (Methods in Molecular Biology, vol. 453), Humana Press, pp 423—439.
G. J. McLachlan, R. Bean, and S. Ng (2008) Clustering of microarray data via mixture models. Statistical Advances in Biomedical Sciences: Clinical Trials, Epidemiology, Survival Analysis, and Bioinformatics, pp. 365—383.

Journal Papers

S. Lieske, R. Bean and R. J. Buning (2026) Road rules, infrastructure and risk: how law-abiding are e-scooter riders? Travel Behaviour and Society, 45:101352.
R. Bean and N. J. Cavenagh (2026) Defining sets which intersect each Latin trade at least twice. Discrete Mathematics, 349(10):115231. arXiv:2605.28027.
C. Bergmeir, F. de Nijs, E. Genov, A. Sriramulu, M. Abolghasemi, R. Bean et al. (2025) Predict+Optimize Problem in Renewable Energy Scheduling. IEEE Access, 13:60064-60087.
R. Bean, D. Pojani and J. Corcoran (2024) Natural barriers facing female cyclists and how to overcome them: A cross national examination of bikesharing schemes. Journal of Cycling and Micromobility Research, 2:100025.
M. Piorko, S. Lang and R. Bean (2023) Deciphering the Hermeticae Philosophiae Medulla: Textual Cultures of Alchemical Secrecy. Ambix 70(2), 150-183.
R. Bean (2023) Forecasting the Monash Microgrid for the IEEE-CIS Technical Challenge. Energies 16(3), 1050.
A. Kimpton, J. Loginova, D. Pojani, R. Bean, T. Sigler, J. Corcoran. (2022) Weather to scoot? How weather shapes shared e-scooter ridership patterns. Journal of Transport Geography 104:103439.
R. Bean, D. Pojani and J. Corcoran (2021). How does weather affect bikeshare use? A comparative analysis of forty cities across climate zones. Journal of Transport Geography 95:103155.
S. Snow, R. Bean, M. Glencross, and N. Horrocks. (2020) Drivers behind residential electricity demand fluctuations due to COVID-19 restrictions. Energies 13:21, 5738.
R. Bean, G. Lasry and F. Weierud. (2022) Eavesdropping on the Biafra-Lisbon link – breaking historical ciphers from the Biafran war. Cryptologia, 46(1), 1-66.
R. Bean (2020) Letter from Richard Bean. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 84 (1), 56-57.
W. Tushar, T. K. Saha, C. Yuen, M. I. Azim, T. Morstyn, H. V. Poor, D. Niyato, R. Bean. (2020) A coalition formation game framework for peer-to-peer energy trading. Applied Energy 261, 114436.
R. Bean, S. Snow, M. Glencross, S. Viller, and N. Horrocks. (2020) Keeping the Power on to home medical devices. PLoS ONE 15 (7), e0235068, 2020.
W. Tushar, T. K. Saha, C. Yuen, T. Morstyn, Nahid-Al-Masood, H. V. Poor, and R. Bean. (2020) Grid Influenced Peer-to-Peer Energy Trading, IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, 11(2), 1407-1418.
W. Tushar, T. K. Saha, C. Yuen, P. Liddell, R. Bean, and H. V. Poor. (2018) Peer-to-peer energy trading with sustainable user participation: A game theoretic approach, IEEE Access 6, 62932-62943, 2018.
I. Mateo-Babiano, R. Bean, J. Corcoran, and D. Pojani. (2016) How does our natural and built environment affect the use of bicycle sharing? Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, vol. 94, pp. 295--307, 2016.
C. E. McLaren, V. R. Gordeuk, …, R.Bean (2008) Bivariate mixture modeling of transferrin saturation and serum ferritin concentration in Asians, African Americans, Hispanics, and whites in the Hemochromatosis and Iron Overload Screening (HEIRS) study, Translational Research, vol. 151, no. 2, pp. 97--109, 2008.
G. J. McLachlan, R. Bean, and L. B.-T. Jones (2007). Extension of the mixture of factor analyzers model to incorporate the multivariate t-distribution, Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, vol. 51, no. 11, pp. 5327—5338.
K. Do, G. McLachlan, R. Bean, and S. Wen (2007) Application of gene shaving and mixture models to cluster microarray gene expression data, Cancer Informatics, vol. 5, pp. 25—43.
G. J. McLachlan, S.-K. Ng, and R. Bean (2006) Robust cluster analysis via mixture models, Austrian Journal of Statistics, vol. 35, no. 2&3, pp. 157—174.
L. B.-T. Jones, R. Bean, G. J. McLachlan, and J. X. Zhu (2006) Mixture models for detecting differentially expressed genes in microarrays, International Journal of Neural Systems, vol. 16, no. 5, pp. 353--362, 2006.
R. Bean (2006) Latin trades on three or four rows, Discrete Mathematics, vol. 306, no. 23, pp. 3028—3041.
G. J. McLachlan, R. Bean, and L. B.-T. Jones (2006) A simple implementation of a normal mixture approach to differential gene expression in multiclass microarrays, Bioinformatics, vol. 22, no. 13, pp. 1608—1615.
G. McLachlan, R. Bean, L. B.-T. Jones, and J. Zhu (2005) Using mixture models to detect differentially expressed genes, Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture, vol. 45, no. 8, pp. 859—866.
R. Bean, H. Bidkhori, M. Khosravi, and E. Mahmoodian (2005) k-homogeneous Latin trades, Bayreuther Mathematische Schriften, vol. 74, pp. 7—18.
R. Bean (2005) Critical sets in the elementary abelian 2-and 3-groups, Utilitas Mathematica, vol. 68, pp. 53—61.
R. Bean (2005) The size of the smallest uniquely completable set in order 8 Latin squares, Journal of Combinatorial Mathematics and Combinatorial Computing, vol. 52, pp. 159—168.
J. H. Friedman and J. J. Meulman (2004) Clustering objects on subsets of attributes (with discussion), Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B (Statistical Methodology), vol. 66, no. 4, pp. 815—849 (note by G. J. McLachlan and R. Bean)
G. J. McLachlan, D. Peel, and R. Bean (2003) Modelling high-dimensional data by mixtures of factor analyzers, Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, vol. 41, no. 3-4, pp. 379—388.
P. Adams, R. Bean, and A. Khodkar (2003) A census of critical sets in the Latin squares of order at most six, Ars Combinatoria, vol. 68, pp. 203—223.
R. Bean and E. S. Mahmoodian (2003) A new bound on the size of the largest critical set in a Latin square, Discrete Mathematics, vol. 267, no. 1-3, pp. 13—21.
G. J. McLachlan, R. Bean, and D. Peel (2002) A mixture model-based approach to the clustering of microarray expression data, Bioinformatics, vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 413—422.
R. Bean, D. Donovan, A. Khodkar, and A. P. Street (2002) Steiner trades that give rise to completely decomposable Latin interchanges, International Journal of Computer Mathematics, vol. 79, no. 12, pp. 1273—1284. Earlier version in Proceedings of the Eleventh Australasian Workshop on Combinatorial Algorithms (AWOCA 2000), Hunter Valley, pp. 17—30.
P. Adams, R. Bean, and A. Khodkar (2001) Disjoint critical sets in Latin squares, Congressus Numerantium, vol. 153, pp. 33—48.
R. Bean and D. Donovan (2000) Closing a gap in the spectrum of critical sets, Australasian Journal of Combinatorics, vol. 22, pp. 191—200.

Conference Papers

M. Abolghasemi and R. Bean (2026). Understanding the Asymmetric Impact of Forecast Accuracy on Decision Quality. In Data Science and Machine Learning: 23rd Australasian Conference (AusDM 2025), Brisbane, 26-28 November 2025, Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol. 2765, Springer, pp. 19-31.
R. Bean and L. Helm (2025). New records for Playfair solutions. In Proceedings of HistoCrypt 2025, Proceedings of the 8^th International Conference on Historical Cryptology, NEALT Proceedings Series 58, Tartu University Library.
R. Bean, C. Gannon and S. Lang (2023). The cipher of Emperor Rudolf II’s ‘Alchemical Handbell’ In Proceedings of HistoCrypt 2023, Proceedings of the 6^th International Conference on Historical Cryptology, Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings 195, pp. 13–17.
R. Bean (2022). Forecasting and Optimizing a Microgrid for the IEEE-CIS Technical Challenge. In Proceedings of Australian Universities Power Engineering Conference 2022, pp. 1–6.
R. Bean, S. Lang and M. Piorko (2022) Solving an Alchemical Cipher in a Shared Notebook of John and Arthur Dee. In Proceedings of HistoCrypt 2022, Proceedings of the 5^th International Conference on Historical Cryptology, Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings 188, pp. 12–21.
A. Balson, R. Bean, A. C. Chapman, S. Snow, S. Viller, N. Horrocks and M. Glencross (2021). On-Demand Batteries as a Peer-to-Peer Service In Proceedings of 2021 IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies-Asia (ISGT Asia), pp. 1-5.
R. Bean (2021) Cryptodiagnosis of Kryptos K4. In Proceedings of HistoCrypt 2021, Proceedings of the 4^th International Conference on Historical Cryptology, Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings 183, pp. 25–33.
R. Bean (2020) The Use of Project Gutenberg and Hexagram Statistics to Help Solve Famous Unsolved Ciphers. In Proceedings of HistoCrypt 2020, Proceedings of the 3^rd International Conference on Historical Cryptology, Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings 171, pp. 31–35.
R. Bean and H. Khan (2018). Using solar and load predictions in battery scheduling at the residential level, Proceedings of the 8th Solar Integration Workshop, 2018.
R. Bean and B. Vanderwaal (2011) Calculation of minimum reserve levels for the Australian National Electricity Market, in 17^th Power Systems Computation Conference Stockholm Sweden - August 22-26, 2011, pp. 364--371, 2011.
C. E. McLaren, V. R. Gordeuk, …, R. Bean et al., (2007) Subpopulations with Iron Deficiency, Liver Disease, or HFE Mutations Revealed by Statistical Mixture Modeling of Transferrin Saturation and Serum Ferritin Concentration in Asians, African Americans, Hispanics, and Whites, Blood, vol. 110, no. 11, p. 2672.
S. Ng, G. McLachlan, R. Bean, and S.-W. Ng (2006). Clustering replicated microarray data via mixtures of random effects models for various covariance structures, in Proceedings of the 2006 workshop on Intelligent systems for Bioinformatics-Volume 73, pp. 29--33, Australian Computer Society, Inc.
K. Basford, G. McLachlan, and R. Bean (2006) Issues of robustness and high dimensionality in cluster analysis, in Compstat 2006-Proceedings in Computational Statistics, pp. 3--15, Physica-Verlag HD.
R. Bean and G. McLachlan (2005) Cluster analysis of high-dimensional data: A case study, in International Conference on Intelligent Data Engineering and Automated Learning, pp. 302--310, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
L. B.-T. Jones, R. Bean, G. McLachlan, and J. Zhu (2005) Application of mixture models to detect differentially expressed genes, in International Conference on Intelligent Data Engineering and Automated Learning, pp. 422--431, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

Preprints

R. Bean (2026). A tight single-change covering design with block size 6. arXiv:2607.10978 [math.CO].
M. Abolghasemi and R. Bean (2022). How to predict and optimise with asymmetric error metrics. arXiv:2211.13586 [cs.LG]. Early version of the AusDM 2025 paper.
R. Bean (2022). Methodology for forecasting and optimization in IEEE-CIS 3rd Technical Challenge. arXiv:2202.00894. Preprint underlying the AUPEC 2022 paper.

Datasets

R. Bean, D. Pojani and J. Corcoran (2024). Natural barriers facing female cyclists and how to overcome them: a cross national examination of bikesharing schemes. Mendeley Data, V1 (200 million-plus trips across 10 cities).
R. Bean, D. Pojani and J. Corcoran (2021). How does weather affect bikeshare use? A comparative analysis of forty cities across climate zones. Mendeley Data, V2 (data and R code).
R. Bean, S. Snow, M. Glencross, S. Viller and N. Horrocks (2020). Keeping the power on to home medical devices (dataset accompanying the PLoS ONE paper). The University of Queensland eSpace.

Software

R. Bean (2021). IEEE-CIS Predict+Optimize competition solution: forecasting in R and battery/activity scheduling in Python with Gurobi; source code, results and methodology.
G. J. McLachlan, R. W. Bean and D. Peel (2002). EMMIX-GENE: mixture model-based clustering of microarray expression data (Windows and Linux releases). Independently reimplemented in 2024 by A. T. Jones as the CRAN R package EMMIXgene, “following the methods described in McLachlan, Bean and Peel (2002)”.

Media writings

R. J. Buning, S. Lieske, R. Bean. Most e-scooter riders follow the rules—here’s what we found, Zag Daily, 13 August 2025.
R. Bean, D. Pojani and J. Corcoran. Bad weather, hills and the dark deter cyclists, but especially women. So what can we do about it?, The Conversation, 2024.
R. Bean, C. Gannon and S. Lang. Seven metals, ringed with four magical inscriptions: what other secrets does the ‘Alchemical Hand Bell’ hold?, The Conversation, 2023.
R. Bean and N. Horrocks, How closely monitoring households’ energy data can unleash their solar outputs and (possibly) make them more money, The Conversation, 2022.
A. Kimpton, D. Pojani, J. Corcoran, J. Loginova, R. Bean and T. Sigler. E-scooters are becoming wildly popular – but we have to factor in the weather, The Conversation, 2022. Republished by TechXplore.
R. Bean, D. Pojani and J. Corcoran, We analysed 100 million bike trips to reveal where in the world cyclists are most likely to brave rain and cold, The Conversation, 2021. Republished by Weatherzone and Smart Water Magazine.
R. Bean, M. Piorko and S. Lang, Deciphering the Philosophers Stone: how we cracked a 400-year-old alchemical cipher, The Conversation, 2021. Republished in Latvian translation by Delfi, Latvia’s largest news portal.
R. Bean, Declassified Cold War code-breaking manual has lessons for solving ‘impossible’ puzzles, The Conversation, 2021.
R. Bean, G. Lasry and F. Weierud, We decrypted messages from the Biafran war that have remained secret for 50 years, The Conversation, 2020.
R. Bean. Cryptology from the crypt: how I cracked a 70-year-old coded message from beyond the grave, The Conversation, 2019. Republished by Nextgov/FCW.
I. Mateo-Babiano, D. Pojani, J. Corcoran, and R. Bean, Here’s what bike-sharing programs need to succeed, The Conversation, 2017. Republished by Phys.org.

Industry Reports and Presentations

S. Lieske, R. Buning, S. Pyrohova, R. Bean and P. Jindalucksawong (2024). E-scooter movement data analysis; Exploring use of active transport facilities, travel speeds, helmet use, and scooter types. Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads, 20 September 2024.
R. Bean Phase identification and load forecasting with home energy data, Energy Queensland EDS Series, 19 March 2020.
R. Bean Data for Networks: New Insights for Network Operations Using Big Data, Australian Power Institute Summer School 26 February 2020.
R. Bean, Aspects of Data Science at Redback Technologies, IEEE Queensland PES Chapter, Brisbane, Australia, 2 April 2019.
R. Bean, Using solar and load prediction in battery scheduling at the residential level, IEEE Queensland PES Chapter, Brisbane, Australia, 27 June 2017.
R. Bean, The effect of climate on Salmonella notifications in Queensland HHSs from 2001 to 2015, Queensland Health, 27 January 2016.
R. Bean and N. Cutler, Queensland Shrugs off a clean energy future, Business Spectator, 7 December 2012.
R. Bean (presenter) and J. Gilmore, The Merit Order Effect, Presentation at Clean Energy Week, Sydney, 27 July 2012.
I. Rose, B. Vanderwaal, R. Bean, A. Turley, N. Culpitt, Modelling Transmission Frameworks Review, Report for Australian Energy Market Commission by ROAM Consulting, 28 February 2013.
N. Cutler, C. Giacomantonio, J. Gilmore, R. Bean, I. Rose, Wind and Solar Modelling for AEMO 100% Renewables Project, Report for Australian Energy Market Operator by ROAM Consulting, 11 September 2012.
D. Winch, I. Rose, R. Bean, T. Riesz, C. Giacomantonio, Pumped Storage Modelling for AEMO 100% Renewables Project, Report for Australian Energy Market Operator by ROAM Consulting, 11 September 2012.
J. Riesz, J. Gilmore, S. Shiao, D. Yeowart, R. Bean, M. Holmes, Impact of the LRET on the costs of FCAS, NCAS and Transmission Augmentation, Report EMC00017 for Australian Energy Market Commission by ROAM Consulting, 13 September 2011.
J. Riesz and R. Bean, Impact of renewable energy and carbon pricing policies on retail electricity prices, Report for Clean Energy Council by ROAM Consulting, 11 March 2011.
R. Bean and B. Vanderwaal, Final Report for Operational MRLs – 2010 MRL Recalculation, Report for Australian Energy Market Operator by ROAM Consulting, 28 June 2010.
B. Vanderwaal, D. Yeowart, R. Bean, J. Riesz, J. Gilmore, M. Buchanan, J. Merefield, Network Augmentation and Congestion Modelling, Report for Australian Energy Market Commission by ROAM Consulting, 29 June 2009.
R. Bean, J. Gilmore, J. Riesz, A. Turley, B. Vanderwaal, Market Impacts of CPRS and RET, Report for Australian Energy Market Commission for ROAM Consulting, 17 December 2008.
R. Bean, Transpower Transmission to Enable Renewables Evaluation, Report for Transpower by ROAM Consulting, 8 May 2008.

Academic conference presentations

R. Bean and L. Helm (presenter). New records for Playfair solutions, HistoCrypt 2025, 8^th International Conference on Historical Cryptology, Poznań, 17 June 2025.
R. Bean, C. Gannon and S. Lang. The cipher of Emperor Rudolf II’s alchemical handbell, HistoCrypt 2023, 6^th International Conference on Historical Cryptology, Munich, 21 June 2023.
R. Bean. Forecasting and Optimizing a Microgrid for the IEEE-CIS Technical Challenge, 32^nd Australasian Universities Power Engineering Conference 2022, Adelaide, 26 September 2022.
R. Bean. Cryptodiagnosis of Kryptos K4. HistoCrypt 2022, 5^th International Conference on Historical Cryptology, Amsterdam, 21 June 2022.
R. Bean (presenter), S. Lang and M. Piorko. Solving an Alchemical Cipher in a Shared Notebook of John and Arthur Dee. HistoCrypt 2022, 5^th International Conference on Historical Cryptology, Amsterdam, 20 June 2022.
R. Bean and G. Lasry, Eavesdropping on the Biafra-Lisbon Link: Breaking historical ciphers from the Biafran War, Cryptologic History Symposium, 11 May 2022.
R. Bean. IEEE-CIS Predict-Optimize Technical Challenge, IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (IEEE SSCI 2021), 5 December 2021. Video
R. Bean (presenter) and H. Khan, Using solar and load predictions in battery scheduling at the residential level, 8th Solar Integration Workshop, Stockholm, Sweden, 16-17 October 2018.
I. Mateo-Babiano (presenter), J. Corcoran and R. Bean. Is bicycle sharing for her? Unpacking the gender dimensions of Brisbane’s CityCycle Scheme, Australian Transport Research Forum, Melbourne, 16 November 2016.
R. Bean (presenter) and B. Vanderwaal. Calculation of minimum reserve levels for the Australian National Electricity Market, Power Systems Computation Conference 2011, Stockholm, Sweden, 22-26 August 2011.
R. Bean (presenter) and G. J. McLachlan. Cluster analysis of high-dimensional data: a case study. Sixth International Conference on Intelligent Data Engineering and Automated Learning (IDEAL ’05), 6-8 July 2005, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.
R. Bean. Latin trades. International Workshop on Combinatorics, Linear Algebra and Graph Coloring, Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, Tehran, Iran, 9-14 August 2003.
R. Bean. Integer programming and critical sets. 19^th British Combinatorial Conference, University of Wales, 30 June - 4 July 2003.
R. Bean (presenter) and I. Wanless. Subsquare-rich Latin squares and their critical sets. 34^th Southeastern International Conference on Combinatorics, Graph Theory and Computing, Florida Atlantic University, 2003.
R. Bean (presenter), P. Adams and A. Khodkar. A census of critical sets in the latin squares of order at most six. 25^th Australasian Conference on Combinatorial Mathematics and Combinatorial Computing, Christchurch, New Zealand, 4-8 December 2000.
R. Bean (presenter) and E. S. Mahmoodian. On the size of the largest critical set in a Latin square. Combinatorics 2000, Gaeta, Italy, 28 May-3 June 2000.
R. Bean (presenter) and D. M. Donovan. Closing a gap in the spectrum of critical sets. 24^th Australasian Conference on Combinatorial Mathematics and Combinatorial Computing (24ACCMCC), Northern Territory University, Darwin, 6 July 1999.

Seminars and other presentations

R. Bean. Online Advanced Training Lab on Alchemical Secrecy: new methodological challenges in computational cryptanalysis, philology, and the history of philosophy and science (invited main speaker). Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, online, 30 June 2026. Video (2h01m recording).
R. Bean. Explaining Bike Share use worldwide by Environmental and Sociodemographic Factors. 21 September 2023, Q Building, University of Newcastle, Hunter Data Analytics Meetup.
R. Bean. Electrification - managing energy data, 24 October 2022, Hatch Newcastle.
R. Bean. Methodology for IEEE-CIS Technical Challenge on Predict+Optimize for Renewable Energy Scheduling, 6 October 2022, University of Newcastle.
R. Bean. Methodology for IEEE-CIS Technical Challenge on Predict+Optimize for Renewable Energy Scheduling, UQ ITEE seminar, 17 February 2022.
R. Bean. Phase identification and load forecasting with home energy data, UQ ITEE seminar, 30 October 2019.
R. Bean. Bike sharing scheme research. Queensland Health, Preventive Health Branch, 22 June 2016.
R. Bean. Seminar on Weibull and lognormal distributions for TTR and TTF modelling. ROAM Consulting, 18 March 2011.
R. Bean. New statistical approaches for detecting differential expression. Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland, 5 October 2006.
R. Bean. Tight single-change covering designs. IPM, Tehran, 1 October 2003.
R. Bean. Fast generation of cubic graphs. IPM, Tehran, 30 October 2002.
R. Bean. On the largest size of the critical sets in Latin squares. Zanjan, 5 May 2002.
R. Bean. Critical set problems in Latin squares. University of Queensland, PhD confirmation seminar, 2 February 1999.

Teaching activities

Hill climbing and simulated annealing for cipher solving. MATH3302 lecture, Coding and Cryptography, University of Queensland, School of Mathematics and Physics, 27 April 2023.
Hill climbing and simulated annealing for cipher solving. COSC2500 lecture, Numerical Methods in Computational Science, University of Queensland, School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, 3 November 2022.
Declassified Cold War code-breaking manual has lessons for solving ‘impossible’ puzzles. MATH3302 lecture, Coding and Cryptography, University of Queensland, School of Mathematics and Physics, 10 March 2022.
COSC2500 Numerical Methods in Computational Science – taught C and C++ programming part. 50% of the course. University of Queensland, School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, Semester 2 2020 and Semester 2 2021.
The Biafran Ciphers. MATH3302 lecture, Coding and Cryptography, University of Queensland, School of Mathematics and Physics, 5 May 2021.
Kryptos. MATH3302 lecture, Coding and Cryptography, University of Queensland, School of Mathematics and Physics, 2 April 2019.
Data Science at Redback. DATA7001 lecture, Introduction to Data Science, The University of Queensland’s School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, 10 October 2018.

Radio appearances

ABC Radio Melbourne (5 September 2022 - 30:01) Codebreaking with David Astle
2NUR Interview (12 November 2021 - 5:12) video
ABC Kelly Higgins-Devine Interview (21 October 2021 - 11:28)
ABC Shaun Bindley Interview (16 October 2021 - 15:40)
ABC North Queensland Henry Bretz Interview (14 October 2021 - 9:02)
ABC Patricia Karvelas Interview (13 October 2021 - 8:16)
ABC Wimmera Regional Riff (12 October 2021 - 15:00)
ABC Mildura Regional Riff (12 October 2021 - 9:38)
ABC Goulburn Regional Riff (12 October 2021 - 7:30)
ABC Gippsland Regional Riff (12 October 2021 - 7:30)
ABC Central Victoria Regional Riff (12 October 2021 - 8:19)
ABC Ballarat Regional Riff (12 October 2021 - 8:35)
ABC Nightlife Interview (5 August 2021 - 50:08)
ABC Perth interview (31 May 2021 - 9:34)
ABC Sydney interview (31 May 2021 - 7:44)
Midnight in the Desert interview (14 September 2019 - 50:56)
ASIO Coin Brisbane ABC interview with Steve Austin (13 September 2019 - 7:49)
6PR Thouless interview (30 August 2019 - 8:32) Cryptology from the Crypt
Adelaide Drive interview (27 August 2019 - 9:11) Cracking the IRA Code
3AW IRA interview (27 August 2019 – 8:00) Cracking the IRA Code
4BC IRA interview (23 August 2019 - 7:24) Cracking the IRA Code

Other media appearances

Study finds most e-scooter users follow speed limits and helmet laws in Brisbane (26 June 2025, TechXplore; also covered by UQ News), coverage of the TMR-commissioned report
How a towel and good lighting will help bring Brisbane workers back to the CBD by Felicity Caldwell on gender cycling in rain research (Brisbane Times, 16 June 2024; also The Age)
Alan Turing and the Philosopher’s Stone by David Hambling (Fortean Times, 30 November 2023)
La campanella alchemica di Rodolfo II by Lia Confossi (4 October 2023, CICAP, Italian skeptics organisation; in print in Query No. 55)
Editorial note on the Ambix Medulla paper, El Club del Alambique, Vol. 1 No. 2 (September 2023, bulletin of the history-of-science group of the Real Sociedad Española de Química)
Скрыт ли таинственный шифр в “алхимическом колокольчике”? (DZEN, 21 June 2023)
Slyšeli jste o tomto záhadném alchymistickém zvonku Rudolfa II.? Vědci netuší, co si o něm myslet (16 June 2023, Dotyk)
Тайный шифр в "Алхимическом колоколе": на что способен этот загадочный артефакт отлитый из магического металла "Электрума"? (Earth Chronicles, 12 June 2023)
Piatra filosofală – marele mister al alchimiştilor, descifrat de doi istorici şi un matematician (3 May 2023, Deştepţi.ro, Romanian)
How closely monitoring households’ energy data can unleash their solar outputs and (possibly) make them more money (22 December 2022, Watt Clarity blog from The Conversation)
Les secrets de l’Alchimie (6 December 2022, Science & Vie)
Science et Vie Junior vous révèle en vidéo, les secrets de l’alchimie (16 November 2022)
How to solve the Australian Signals Directorate 75th anniversary 50 cent coin (5 September 2022, ABC)
Un alquimista llamado Arthur Dee by Javier Cancho, Punta Norte segment (3 July 2022, Onda Cero, Spanish national radio)
Как ученые взломали секретный код средневекового алхимика (9 June 2022, DZEN)
On a percé le secret de la pierre philosophale (February 2022, Science & Vie)
RCC support saves UQ data scientist time and energy (17 December 2021, UQ Research Computing Centre News)
Alchimie : le code secret et la formule de la pierre philosophale enfin déchiffrés ? (29 November 2021, Neozone)
破译400年前炼金术士的密码 (24 November 2021, Zhuanlan blog)
Cartea pe care nimeni nu a putut-o citi de 400 de ani: Secretul alchimiştilor dezlegat prin spargerea unui cifru (22 November 2021, Ziare.com, Romanian)
La recette de la pierre philosophale enfin décryptée ! (16 November 2021, Alouette, French regional radio)
La recette de la légendaire pierre philosophale enfin décodée… l’élixir de la vie éternelle bientôt testée ? by Laure Ducos (15 November 2021, Midi Libre)
Deux historiennes et un mathématicien ont déchiffré le code secret de la pierre philosophale (13 November 2021, Slate.fr)
O segredo de um alquimista medieval para a “vida eterna” foi desvendado by Daniel Costa (12 November 2021, ZAP Notícias, Portuguese)
How Scholars Cracked a Medieval Alchemist’s Secret Code (11 November 2021, Atlas Obscura)
Comment les secrets de la pierre philosophale ont pu être percés 400 ans après by Melissa Lepoureau (10 November 2021, Daily Geek Show)
Como quebrar a cifra de um texto sobre alquimia com 400 anos? (29 October 2021, Cogito, Portuguese)
How cyclists respond to bad weather: Lessons learnt from 100 million rides by Matt De Neef (28 October 2021, Cycling Tips, now hosted at Velo/Outside Online)
破译400年前炼金术士的密码 (25 October 2021, Tencent News)
Wie Cipherbrain-Leser Richard Bean eine 400 Jahre alte Verschlüsselung löste (24 October 2021, Cipherbrain/Klausis Krypto Kolumne; English version)
古老的「鍊金術」秘本終於被破譯了 (Aboluowang, 20 October 2021)
Quel est l’impact du changement climatique sur la pratique du vélo ? (18 October 2021, La Dépêche du Midi, ETX wire)
Загадка Философского камня: как ученые расшифровали древний рецепт эликсира жизни (TechInsider.Ru, 14 October 2021)
How climate change could affect bicycle use (14 October 2021, Forbes India)
How climate change could affect bicycle use (12 October 2021, ETX Daily Up)
Richard Bean cracked the 400 year Philosophers’ Stone cipher over two weekends (13 October 2021, ABC)
Частично рассекречено методическое пособие АНБ по взлому неизвестных шифров (18 June 2021, habr.com)
Cryptograms from the Biafran War broken (28 December 2019, Klausis Krypto Kolumne)
The Unsolved Cipher (5 December 2019, UQ EAIT Ingenuity magazine)
Data scientist cracks unsolved cipher (5 September 2019, UQ EAIT)
How Richard Bean has become a media star since his codebreaking successes (31 August 2019, Klausis Krypto Kolumne)
How I cracked a 70-year-old coded message from beyond the grave (30 August 2019, ABC from The Conversation)
Криптологи взломали сложный шифр, остававшийся нерешенным 70 лет (29 August 2019, ftimes.ru)
Y a-t-il une vie après la mort ? (29 August 2019, bibmath.net)
Brisbane scientist cracks secret IRA message from 1920s (26 August 2019 at Brisbane Times, The Age, Sydney Morning Herald)
UQ data scientist cracks near century old crypto-code (23 August 2019, UQ News)
Cracking the IRA Code (23 August 2019, 4BC)
Richard Bean solves another Top 50 crypto mystery (16 August 2019, Klausis Krypto Kolumne, on the Thouless solution)
Top 25 crypto mystery solved by Australian codebreaker (8 August 2019, Klausis Krypto Kolumne, on the IRA solution)
Here’s what bike-sharing programs need to succeed (26 December 2017, SBS from The Conversation)
Brisbane City Council to announce cyclist clearways for Sylvan Road by Kim Stephens (16 December 2015, Brisbane Times)
Brisbane’s CityCycle program held back by fear, frustration by Kristian Silva (22 January 2015, Brisbane Times)
Riverwalk draws female riders by Kim Stephens (30 September 2014, Brisbane Times)
‘Risk averse’ Brisbane women avoiding cycling by Kim Stephens (30 April 2014, Brisbane Times)

Service

Fellow of the Australian Institute of Energy (UQ Expert Profile).

Chairing “Machine Learning” session #1 at HistoCrypt 2022, 20 June 2022

Chairing “History” session #2 at HistoCrypt 2023, 20 June 2023

Secretary of the HistoCrypt Steering Committee; Steering Committee member since 2 October 2023

Programme Committee member, HistoCrypt 2024 (Oxford), HistoCrypt 2025 (Poznań), and HistoCrypt 2026, 9^th International Conference on Historical Cryptology, Amiens, 22–24 June 2026

External reviewer, PhD progress review, UQ 2023

Verified reviewing

Web of Science 12 verified peer reviews
ORCID 13 reviews for 9 publications/grants

GitHub source code with code for combinatorics, cryptography and forecasting in R, C, and Python

Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences Contributed to 27 sequences; authored 8 sequences

A080572 Number of ordered pairs (i, j), 0 ≤ i, j < n, for which (i&j) is nonzero,
where & is the bitwise AND operator (22 Feb 2003)
A083276 Number of distinct chess positions after n plies, including differences due to castling and en passant availability (2 Jun 2003)
A090741 Maximum number of transversals in a Latin square of order n (3 Feb 2004)
A092237 Maximum number of intercalates in a Latin square of order n (17 Feb 2004)
A091323 Minimum number of transversals in a Latin square of order 2n+1 (17 Feb 2004)
A094087 Domination number of the Cartesian product of two n-cycles (1 May 2004)
A356649 Domination number of the Cartesian product of three n-cycles (19 Aug 2022)
A356650 Domination number of the Cartesian product of four n-cycles (20 Aug 2022)

Recognition in books and reference works

E. Dunin and K. Schmeh, Codebreaking: A Practical Guide (No Starch Press, expanded edition 2023) devotes a named section to my IRA solution (“Success story: Richard Bean’s solution to the last unsolved IRA cryptogram”) and covers my Thouless solution in the text.
G. J. Shaw, Cryptic: From Voynich to the Angel Diaries (Yale University Press, 2025) cites both the Ambix 2023 and HistoCrypt 2022 alchemical cipher papers.
A. D. Keedwell and J. Dénes, Latin Squares and Their Applications, 2nd edition (Elsevier, 2015) cites two of my papers in its treatment of critical sets.
V. Shcherbacov, Elements of Quasigroup Theory and Applications (Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2017) cites two of my papers; the same papers appear in his survey “Quasigroups in cryptology” (2009).
N. J. Cavenagh, “The theory and application of latin bitrades: a survey” (Mathematica Slovaca, 2008) cites four of my papers.
C. Elsholtz and A. Mütze, “Sudoku im Mathematikunterricht” (Mathematische Semesterberichte, 2007) cites my result on the smallest uniquely completable set in order 8 Latin squares.
E. Vatutin et al., HPCST 2020 (Springer CCIS 1304) cites my PhD thesis in work on orthogonal diagonal Latin squares.
M. Willin, “Robert Thouless”, Psi Encyclopedia (Society for Psychical Research, 2021, updated 2026) credits me as solver of the second Thouless code.
Wikipedia: German Wikipedia carries a standalone biography, Richard Bean (Kryptoanalytiker); my papers and solutions are cited in the English articles Kryptos, Robert H. Thouless and George Lasry, and in the corresponding German and French articles.
Six of my combinatorics papers received signed reviews in zbMATH (reviewers include P. Boyvalenkov, P. Horak, M. Klazar, Du Ding-Zhu and J. Bierbrauer).
Named among the “Best Codebreaking” contenders in the historical-cryptology community’s annual Golden Alice awards three consecutive years (2019 IRA and Thouless; 2020 Biafra; 2021 Dee cipher).

Acknowledgements

CIA ceiling, Cipher Message (2025) CIA Coded ceiling cipher message solution
Solving a 750-Letter General Bigram Substitution Challenge (2025) by Dunin, Van Eycke, Helm and Schmeh, HistoCrypt 2025, pp. 133-140; acknowledged in the paper.
Acknowledgements and Errata for “Codebreaking Guide” by Elonka Dunin and Klaus Schmeh
Angelos Tanagras: An Experiment to Test Survival (2021) Acknowledgement for literature search.
Three unsolved cryptograms left behind by Lambros Callimahos (2021) Credited with finding the encrypted texts in the declassified NSA manual Military Cryptanalytics.
A 6.5-hour interview with Kryptos creator Jim Sanborn (2020) I located the Smithsonian’s 2009 Sanborn oral-history transcript and prompted its first publication: “Thanks to him, my blog is the first publication to cover this Kryptos-related document.”
The NKRYPT sculptures (2020) “thanks to Richard Bean for making me aware of this artwork”; I also provided the transcript of the 2015 Kryptos workshop with CIA cryptographer Ed Scheidt.
Errata for “The Mathematics of Secrets” by Joshua Holden (2017, 2018, 2020)
Latin squares report by Helen Hunt (2014) Acknowledgement.
The Health of Queenslanders 2016 Acknowledgement for “Analysis”.
The EM Algorithm and Extensions (2008) “Lloyd Flack, Ian Wood, Vivien Challis, Sam Wang, and Richard Bean provided us with a great deal of LaTeX advice at various stages of the typesetting of the manuscript, and we owe them a great sense of gratitude.”
Use of Microarray Data via Model-Based Classification in the Study and Prediction of Survival from Lung Cancer (2005) by Jones, Ng, Ambroise, McLachlan
On selection biases with prediction rules formed from gene expression data (2008) by Zhu, McLachlan, Ben-Tovim Jones and Wood
4-homogeneous latin trades (2005) by Cavenagh, Donovan and Drapal “The authors would like to acknowledge the helpful work of Richard Bean who verified Theorem 41 by computer.”
Analyzing Microarray Gene Expression Data (2004) “Special thanks are due to Richard Bean who has greatly assisted with all aspects of the book, including proof reading and overseeing the numerous technical issues that arose during the preparation of the manuscript in camera-ready form”