Jeddah, KSA, 12 January 2016 – The Islamic Development Bank (IDB), has released the names of the winners of the Award for Best Application of Agent-Based Simulation (ABS) in Islamic Finance.
The award was first launched in February 2015. It is a collaboration of IDB, the Saudi Arabia Basic Industries Corporation Chair for Islamic Financial Markets (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia) and the Islamic Financial Engineering Lab (Rabat, Morocco).

ABS is a modeling approach that uses computer simulations to assess the effects of the actions and interactions of individuals or groups on a particular system. The objective of the ABS award is to encourage students worldwide to learn and apply agent-based simulation to contribute to the advancement of Islamic economics and finance.

Winners receive US $8,000, US $6,000 and US $4,000 for first, second and third place respectively.

The 2015 first-place winner is Mohamed Wail Aaminou for his project Leveraging ethics to expand Islamic banks’ customer base: A fuzzy agent-based modeling approach.

The second prize is awarded to Safae Badraoui, Khalid Bensaid, and Ahmed Mouad El Haloui for their team project The impact of qualitative characteristics on market equilibrium: Application to Shariaa compliance simulation with agent-based modeling.

The third prize recipient is Sara Bourhime for her contribution to the project Agent-based simulation in Islamic microfinance: Qard Hassan peer-lending.

The Award Committee announced the winners, after screening and evaluating all anonymous submissions.

The awards will be conferred to the winners in a special ceremony at Mohamed V University in Rabat, Morocco, on 18 February 2016. An open workshop on Complexity, Modeling and Simulation in Islamic

Finance will be held alongside the ceremony. International speakers will participate in the workshop. The top five projects, including the three winning entries, will be presented during the event.