Prof. Dr . Christian Rieck

Prof. Dr. Christian Rieck is an economist who has been teaching since 2002, currently as program director for International Finance and Economic Theory at Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences. He trains managers and teachers in game theory and is a research expert on the future of the financial industry, strategic behavior, and digital transformation, with a particular focus on the strategic interplay between humans and artificial intelligence (AI).

Since 2019, he has been offering a weekly lecture series in a virtual lecture hall on his own YouTube channel with hundreds of thousands of subscribers (followers from all walks of life and age groups) – popularizing an abstract academic concept (FAZ) – and is very prominent as a successful author on the topics of game theory and the future of the financial sector through many publications, as well as being one of the German professors with the widest reach. He uses game theory to research the future of money, the digital future and digital transformation of value chains, the inner mechanics of crises, and analyzes how social media and AI will affect our future.

Prof. Rieck studied business administration, business education, and physics (Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main). Even as a young student, he was fortunate enough to join the close circle of game theorists, who were still unknown at the time. In addition to his teaching activities, his expertise lies in making this originally mathematical theory accessible to a general audience and applying it to current topics. After completing his studies, he worked as head of the international Competence Center Banking at IBM Global Services. He has worked as a consultant in Germany and abroad and cannot deny his secret affection for engineering sciences.

He has been exploring the interaction between humans and machines for a long time, focusing on understanding robots. It is now clear that this is not absurd science, but rather existential. For example, for the heavily regulated financial sector, it is not a visionary stage, but reality; AI has long since “arrived” there as a tool. And it is no longer only research laboratories that know what cyborgs are.

Prof. Rieck, who also has a passion for photography and motorcycling, emphasizes this paradigm shift in payment transactions, where banks and credit card companies are losing importance, in insurance contract management, where comparison portals are feared, and in financial consulting, where the question arises as to whether a reliable algorithm will replace consultants because technology better serves the customer's need for simplicity. Even if one is known to have less affinity for technical innovations than Amazon, for example.

Prof. Rieck's audience can look forward to being involved in his lectures, where complicated theories are illustrated in a comprehensible way. Prof. Rieck always proves that even economic theory and economic history can hold entertaining surprises.

He lectures in German and English.