Dr Richard Bean

Data Scientist · Senior Energy Market Analyst · Mathematician

Summary

Data scientist and energy market analyst with more than twenty years' experience across academia, government, and industry. Currently Senior Energy Market Analyst at Energy Exemplar, developing PLEXOS models for the WA, NT, and NEM electricity markets, and an Affiliate of the UQ Cyber Research Centre and the University of Newcastle. Previously Research Fellow at UQ's Centre for Energy Data Innovation, with prior positions at AEMO, Redback Technologies, and ROAM Consulting. Published 55 peer-reviewed works (6 book chapters, 34 journal articles, 15 conference papers) plus 11 popular-press articles, spanning energy forecasting, transport analytics and classical cryptography. Winner of the IEEE-CIS international energy forecasting competition.

Contact & profiles

Email (public CV): cv-2026@richardbean.id.au
Google Scholar: scholar.google.com/citations?user=HxfGta4AAAAJ
ORCID: 0000-0002-1723-6760
Wikidata: Q77885229
Wikipedia (DE): Richard Bean (Kryptoanalytiker)
Google Knowledge Graph: kgmid /g/11qq7yj812
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/richardbean
IEEE Xplore: Author 37086514359
UQ Expert Profile: about.uq.edu.au/experts/24473
GitHub: github.com/RichardBean

Education

PhD in Mathematics, The University of Queensland, 1998–2001. Critical Sets in Latin Squares and Associated Structures [DOI].
BSc (First Class Honours and University Medal), Computer Science and Mathematics, The University of Queensland, 1994–1997.

Employment

Senior Energy Market Analyst, Energy Exemplar — September 2024 to present

Develop and enhance PLEXOS models for external clients; assist potential clients with navigating PLEXOS (pre-sales).
Led the significant enhancement of Energy Exemplar's models for the West Australian Electricity Market, adding the Dynamic Frequency Control Model and ancillary-services trapezia with complex constraints — applicable in WA, NT and NEM markets.
Updated the internal Japan model and work closely with AEMO and private/government clients in WA and NT to more closely model the real-world operation of each market.

Research Fellow and Affiliate, University of Queensland — July 2019 to present

Affiliate, University of Newcastle — July 2021 to present

In the Centre for Energy Data Innovation, led collection and analysis of large volumes of energy meter data — including a 20,000-device Queensland deployment with Luceo Energy and Energy Queensland. Built clustering and forecasting pipelines and an observatory sharing anonymised data publicly.
Won the IEEE international energy forecasting competition for solar generation and building energy use at Monash.
Published extensively on energy-data cybersecurity; weather, land-use, gender and hilliness in international bike-share and e-scooter schemes; breaking unsolved historical ciphers; and combinatorics. Regular contributor to The Conversation. Languages: C, R, Python, SQL, Gurobi.

Data Scientist, Redback Technologies — July 2016 to June 2019

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

Senior Epidemiologist & Senior Research Officer, Queensland Health — July 2015 to June 2016

Analysis of survey data and burden-of-disease data for the biennial Chief Health Officer's Report; STATA programming. Epidemiology of food-borne illness outbreaks (salmonella, campylobacter).

Advanced Research Officer, Queensland Health — February 2014 to December 2015

Analysis of public-health data; finding datasets to inform preventative programs; administration of the Department's ArcGIS Online system; developing and analysing public-health KPIs across asbestos, lead, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, food-borne illness, medicines and poisons, and water programs.

Senior Analyst, Australian Energy Market Operator — February 2013 to June 2013

Reviewing AEMO's National Electricity Forecasting Report data and models; assessing the impact of mandatory electricity restrictions; weather-correction models.

Senior Analyst, ROAM Consulting — April 2007 to December 2012

Mathematical modelling of the Australian NEM and the New Zealand Electricity Market. Reports on market forecasting and analysis for government and commercial clients.
Developed statistical methodologies for reliability in interconnected power systems, including detailed analysis of power-station outages for the 2010 Minimum Reserve Levels project.
Programming in VBA, C++, Excel and Access (SQL).

Research Officer, Institute for Molecular Bioscience, UQ — December 2003 to March 2007

Postdoctoral Associate, Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, Tehran — April 2002 to October 2003

Lecturer, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran — 2002 (Semester 2)

Research Assistant & Officer (Statistics), UQ Mathematics — April 2001 to March 2002

Graph theory, combinatorics, operations research and statistics. Microarray analysis. Programming in C, Fortran, Matlab, R and Python.

Selected publications

Full publications list: see publications page. Highlights include:

R. Bean and N. J. Cavenagh (2026). Defining sets which intersect each Latin trade at least twice. Discrete Mathematics 349:115231.
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. Journal of Cycling and Micromobility Research 2:100025.
M. Piorko, S. Lang and R. Bean (2023). Deciphering the Hermeticae Philosophiae Medulla. Ambix 70(2):150–183.
R. Bean (2023). Forecasting the Monash Microgrid for the IEEE-CIS Technical Challenge. Energies 16(3):1050.
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, 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.
W. Tushar et al. and R. Bean (2020). A coalition formation game framework for peer-to-peer energy trading. Applied Energy 261:114436.
R. Bean et al. (2020). Keeping the power on to home medical devices. PLoS ONE 15(7):e0235068.
G. J. McLachlan, R. Bean and D. Peel (2002). A mixture model-based approach to the clustering of microarray expression data. Bioinformatics 18(3):413–422.

Teaching

MATH3302 Coding and Cryptography, UQ — guest lectures on hill-climbing and simulated annealing for cipher solving (2021, 2022, 2023); Kryptos (2019); the Biafran ciphers (2021); cold-war code-breaking (2022).
COSC2500 Numerical Methods in Computational Science, UQ — taught the C/C++ component (50% of course), Semesters 2/2020 and 2/2021.
DATA7001 Introduction to Data Science, UQ — guest lecture on data science at Redback (2018).

Service

Steering Committee member, HistoCrypt, since October 2023.
Session chair at HistoCrypt 2022 (Machine Learning) and HistoCrypt 2023 (History).
Chair, Australian Institute of Energy Newcastle Branch, 2023–2026.
External PhD-progress reviewer, UQ, 2023.
12 verified peer reviews on Web of Science; 12 reviews on ORCID.

Open source & OEIS

GitHub: source code for combinatorics, cryptography and forecasting in R, C and Python.
Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences: contributed to 26 sequences, authored seven (including A080572, A090741, A092237, A091323, A094087, A356649, A356650).

Volunteer work

Co-convenor, Brisbane CBD Bicycle User Group, 2013–2021.
Expert witness, Queensland Government Cycling Inquiry, 2013.
Volunteer, Hunter Data Analytics meetup and Newcastle Cycleways Movement.