Dr Richard Bean

This overview selects career highlights. The complete CV includes all publications, reports, presentations, teaching, service and media appearances.

Summary

Energy market analyst and data scientist with 25 years' experience across industry, government and academia. At Energy Exemplar I develop and enhance models of the WA, NT and NEM electricity markets in PLEXOS (a commercial electricity-market simulation platform) 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. I remain an Affiliate of the UQ Cyber Research Centre and the University of Newcastle. 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 (6 book chapters, 35 journal contributions, 15 conference publications) plus 11 popular-press articles, spanning energy forecasting, transport analytics and classical cryptography, 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). Source: Google Scholar, September 2026.

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] [arXiv]; abstract in the Bulletin of the Australian Mathematical Society 66(1):175–176 (2002) [DOI].
• BSc (First Class Honours and University Medal), Computer Science and Mathematics, The University of Queensland, 1994–1997.

Employment

Selected publications

Full publications list: see publications page. Highlights include:

1. 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.
2. R. Bean and N. J. Cavenagh (2026). Defining sets which intersect each Latin trade at least twice. Discrete Mathematics 349(10):115231.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. M. Piorko, S. Lang and R. Bean (2023). Deciphering the Hermeticae Philosophiae Medulla. Ambix 70(2):150–183.
6. R. Bean (2023). Forecasting the Monash Microgrid for the IEEE-CIS Technical Challenge. Energies 16(3):1050.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. W. Tushar et al. and R. Bean (2020). A coalition formation game framework for peer-to-peer energy trading. Applied Energy 261:114436.
10. R. Bean et al. (2020). Keeping the power on to home medical devices. PLoS ONE 15(7):e0235068.
11. 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 Kryptos (2019), the Biafran ciphers (2021), the declassified Cold War code-breaking manual (2022) and hill-climbing and simulated annealing for cipher solving (2023).
• COSC2500 Numerical Methods in Computational Science, UQ: taught the C/C++ component (50% of course), Semesters 2/2020 and 2/2021; guest lecture on hill-climbing and simulated annealing for cipher solving (2022).
• DATA7001 Introduction to Data Science, UQ: guest lecture on data science at Redback (2018).

Service

• Fellow of the Australian Institute of Energy (UQ Expert Profile).
• Secretary, HistoCrypt Steering Committee; Steering Committee member since October 2023.
• Programme Committee member, HistoCrypt 2024 (Oxford), 2025 (Poznań) and 2026 (Amiens); 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; 13 reviews for 9 publications and grants on ORCID.

Open source, software & OEIS

• 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.
• GitHub: source code for combinatorics, cryptography and forecasting in R, C and Python.
• EMMIX-GENE (G. J. McLachlan, R. W. Bean and D. Peel, 2002): mixture model-based clustering of microarray expression data; independently reimplemented in 2024 by A. T. Jones as the CRAN R package EMMIXgene, which follows the methods of McLachlan, Bean and Peel (2002).
• Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences: contributed to 27 sequences, authored eight (A080572, A083276, A090741, A091323, A092237, A094087, A356649, A356650).

Industry reports

• 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. Report for the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads, 20 September 2024.

Published 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, over 200 million trips across ten cities [DOI].
• 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 [DOI].
• 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, UQ eSpace [DOI].

Media and press

My work has been covered by the ABC, Atlas Obscura, Forbes India, Science & Vie, Slate, Fortean Times, The Age, Cycling Tips and outlets in Russia, China, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Latvia and the Czech Republic, alongside 21 radio interviews. The full list of more than 50 press items and the radio appearances is in the complete HTML CV, the plain-text CV and the PDF.

Recognition

• My solution of the last unsolved IRA cryptogram has a named section in E. Dunin and K. Schmeh, Codebreaking: A Practical Guide (No Starch Press, expanded edition 2023), which also covers the Thouless solution; the Society for Psychical Research's Psi Encyclopedia credits me as solver of the second Thouless code.
• My combinatorics papers are cited in A. D. Keedwell and J. Dénes, Latin Squares and Their Applications (2nd ed., Elsevier, 2015) and V. Shcherbacov, Elements of Quasigroup Theory and Applications (CRC, 2017); the alchemical-cipher papers in G. J. Shaw, Cryptic: From Voynich to the Angel Diaries (Yale University Press, 2025).
• German Wikipedia carries a standalone biography, Richard Bean (Kryptoanalytiker); my work is cited in the English articles on Kryptos, Robert H. Thouless and George Lasry. The full list is in the plain-text CV and the PDF.

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.