Tomaso Aste is professor of complexity science at UCL Computer Science Department. A trained Physicist, he has substantially contributed to research in financial systems modeling, complex data analytics and machine learning. He is passionate in the investigation of the effect of technologies on society and currently he focuses on the application of Blockchain Technologies to domains beyond digital currencies. He is Scientific Director of the UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies; Head of the Financial Computing and Analytics Group; Programme Director of the MSc in Financial Risk Management; Vice-Director of the Centre for doctoral Training in Financial Computing & Analytics; Member of the Board of the ESRC LSE-UCL Systemic Risk Centre. Prior to UCL he held positions in UK and Australia. He is consulting for financial institutions, banks, FinTech firms and digital-economy startups.

David Yermack is the Albert Fingerhut Professor of Finance and Business Transformation and Chairman of the Finance Department at New York University’s Stern School of Business, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1994. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Law at the NYU School of Law, Director of the NYU Pollack Center for Law and Business, and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research law and economics program. In Fall 2014 he co-taught a full semester course at NYU on Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies, the first course of its type at a major research university. In addition to his recent research on blockchains and digital currencies, Professor Yermack has published some of the most cited papers in the fields of executive compensation and corporate governance. He has also written papers on such diverse topics as options in baseball player contracts, incentive compensation for clergymen, tobacco litigation, fraudulent charitable contributions, CEOs’ mansions, and the fashion industry. Professor Yermack was awarded AB (1995), MBA (1991), JD (1991), AM (1993) and PhD (1994) degrees, all from Harvard University. He has been appointed as a visiting professor at 12 international universities, a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Banks of New York and Philadelphia, and has given invited research seminars at more than 100 universities and institutes worldwide

Primavera De Filippi is a permanent researcher at the CNRS in Paris and faculty associate at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, where she is investigating the concept of governance-by-design as it relates to blockchain technologies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc. Primavera holds a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence. She is a member of the Global Future Council on Blockchain Technologies at the World Economic Forum, as well as the founder of the Internet Governance Forum’s dynamic coalitions on Blockchain Technology (COALA). In addition to her academic research, Primavera acts as a legal expert for Creative Commons in France and sits on the stakeholder board of the P2P Foundation.

Alexander Lipton is Connection Science fellow at MIT Media Lab, adjunct professor of mathematics at NYU Courant Institute, an advisory board member at the Oxford-Man Institute, and a Scientific Committee member at UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies. He departed from Bank of America Merrill Lynch where he served for ten years as a managing director. During this time, Alex worked in various senior managerial roles including quantitative solutions executive and co-head of the Global Quantitative Group. Earlier, he was a managing director and head of Capital Structure Quantitative Research at Citadel Investment Group in Chicago; he has also worked for Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and Bankers Trust. While working full time as a banker, Alex held several prestigious academic appointments, including visiting professor of quantitative finance at Oxford-Man Institute, visiting professor of mathematics at Imperial College London, and visiting professor of mathematics at the University of Illinois. Before switching to finance, Alex was a full professor of Mathematics at the University of Illinois and a consultant at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees in pure mathematics from Moscow State University. His current professional interests include digital banking, FinTech, including distributed ledger and other applications of cryptography in banking and payment systems. His scientific interests are centered on quantitative development of modern monetary circuit theory, mechanisms of money creation, interlinked banking networks, balance sheet optimization, and related topics. In 2000 Alex was awarded the first Quant of the Year Award by Risk Magazine. Alex is the author of two books (Magnetohydrodynamics and Spectral Theory and Mathematical Methods for Foreign Exchange) and the editor of five more, including, most recently, Quant of the Year 2000-2014, All Award Winning Papers. He has published more than a hundred papers on hydrodynamics, magnetohydrodynamics, astrophysics, chemical physics, and financial engineering. Alex is a founding patron of The 14-10 Club at the Royal Institution (jointly with David Harding). Alex is an avid collector of military optics and is currently working on a book on the history of military binoculars.

Market infrastructure expert with research interests in the fields of market microstructure and innovation of financial markets. His current work supports the definition of policies in the area of technological innovation by assessing its potential impact on market infrastructures and payments. He contributes to the definition of potential use cases, assessing their ability to deal with the challenges faced by users and their likely impact on their business by means of scenario thinking, econometric analysis, and engaging with market participants. Working in the DG-Market Infrastructure and Payments at the European Central Bank, Andrea has focused on distributed ledger technologies and machine learning since August 2015. Before that, he dealt with issues related to collateral management and securities market – first as an assistant professor since May 2012 and then in policy-oriented work at the ECB, where he focused on issues related to market integration.

Carol Alexander is Professor of Finance at Sussex and  Co-Editor of the Journal of Banking and Finance. Carol has been back at Sussex (her Alma Mater) since 2012.  She was appointed the John von Neumann Chair at TU Munich for the year 2018 and in January 2019 she became visiting professor at the Oxford campus of Peking University Business School.

Prior academic appointments were as Chair of Financial Risk Management at the ICMA Centre in the Henley Business School at Reading (1999 – 2012) and lecturer in Mathematics and Economics at the University of Sussex (1985 – 1998). She holds degrees from the University of Sussex (BSc First Class, Mathematics with Experimental Psychology; PhD Algebraic Number Theory) and the London School of Economics (MSc Econometrics and Mathematical Economics). She also has an Honorary Professorship at the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest, Romania.

Carol has also held several positions in financial institutions: Fixed Income Trader at UBS/Phillips and Drew (UK); Academic Director of Algorithmics (Canada); Director of Nikko Global Holdings and Head of Market Risk Modeling (UK); Risk Research Advisor, SAS (USA). She also acts as an expert witness and consultant in financial modelling. From 2010 – 2012 Carol was Chair of the Board of PRMIA (Professional Risk Manager’s International Association).

She publishes widely on a broad range of topics, including: volatility theory; option pricing and hedging; trading volatility; hedging with futures; alternative investments; random orthogonal matrix simulation; game theory and real options. She has written and edited numerous books in mathematics and finance and published extensively in top-ranked international journals. Her four-volume textbook on Market Risk Analysis (Wileys, 2008) is the definitive guide to the subject. Her latest interests focus on Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies and her forthcoming book (with Douglas Cumming, FAU) is another Wiley text on Corruption and Fraud in Financial Markets.

Victoria Lemieux is an Associate Professor of archival science at the iSchool and lead of the Blockchain research cluster, Blockchain@UBC at the University of British Columbia – Canada’s largest and most diverse research cluster devoted to blockchain technology. Her current research is focused on risk to the availability of trustworthy records, in particular in blockchain record keeping systems, and how these risks impact upon transparency, financial stability, public accountability and human rights.

Victoria received the 2015 Emmett Leahy Award for outstanding contributions to the field of records management, a 2015 World Bank Big Data Innovation Award, and a 2016 Emerald Literati Award for her research on blockchain technology. She is also a faculty associate at multiple units within the University of British Columbia, including the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, Sauder School of Business, and the Institute for Computers, Information and Cognitive Systems. Victoria holds a doctorate from University College London (Archival Studies, 2002), and has been a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) since 2005.