Speakers

Albert Acebrón is a undergrad student at Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. He previously worked on the design of NEO’s crosschain protocol at NGC, built a crosschain bridge between Binance Chain and NEO with backing from BinanceX and is currently part of the community multisig of the KEEP network (tBTC).
Alexei Zamyatin is the CEO and co-founder of Interlay and a researcher at Imperial Colledge London

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexei-zamyatin/
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.at/citations?user=BJDPyu0AAAAJ
Dr. Andrey Kuprianov is a Senior Research Engineer at Informal Systems (https://informal.systems), focusing on developing practical verification methods and tools for blockchain infrastructure. He received his PhD in formal verification from Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany. Having worked both in academia and in industry, Andrey has gained broad experience in the areas of formal methods and security, software engineering, distributed and cloud systems. He strives to make computer systems reliable by combining simplicity and elegance of design with bug-fixing through verification and testing.

Email: andrey@informal.systems
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrey-kupriyanov-3b43247b/
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=GQBmugIAAAAJ
Babu Pillai is a PhD candidate at the School of Information and Communication Technology at Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia. His current research relates to Cross-chain Technology that enables interoperability between distributed ledger systems such as blockchain. In 2017, Mr Pillai obtained his Master’s degree in Information Technology from Griffith University. Prior to that, Mr Pillai worked as an Engineering Professional in the building industry with the design team where his main purpose was to merge engineering design and technology to create efficient and collaborative design processes. Mr Pillai received his technical qualification in Civil Engineering from India in 1995 and has worked in Australia, India and the Middle East.

Email: babu.pillai@griffithuni.edu.au
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/babu-pillai-08042114
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=Xtg1XHIAAAAJ
Dr. Christof Spanring is the lead Pantos researcher at Bitpanda. As such he currently works on enabling blockchain-agnostic Token transfers, balancing approaches and interests from academic researchers, established cryptocurrency projects, financial institutions, fintech corporations and ICO participants. His research interests include finite and infinite structures, dialogue games, distributed ledgers and the foundations of mathematics and computer science. He adamantly believes that Yoga is less of a physical or mental practice and more of a way of life.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christofspanring
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=9kesY5kAAAAJ&hl=de
Daniel Engel is a doctoral student at Brown University Computer Science.
Dean Tribble co-designed the negotiation process and contract for the first smart contracting system, AMiX. As a Principal Architect at Microsoft, he co-designed the Midori distributed object-capability operating system. As founder and CTO for Agorics (acquired by Microsoft), he architected the brokerage information system for Schwab’s active traders and the WebMart electronic contract system for SunLabs. As CTO of VerifyValid and VP of Deluxe, his echeck systems have carried billions of dollars. Dean is currently CEO at Agoric, where he and his team are building a JavaScript Smart Contract platform to accelerate the adoption of Decentralized Finance.

Email: tribble@agoric.com
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deantribble/
Enrique Fynn completed his Ph.D. from USI, Switzerland in January 2021. Currently he works at Chorus One building bridges between blockchains.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/enrique-fynn-bb5706140/
WebSite: https://enriquefynn.com/
Ganesha Upadhyaya is a Research Engineer building the cross-chain infrastructure for Harmony protocol (https://www.harmony.one). He holds a MS and a PhD degrees in computer science, specializing in compilers, programming languages, and software engineering. He has published over a dozen research papers at top-tier conferences and journals, such as International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), and Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages and Applications (OOPSLA).Ganesha also has experience building scalable software systems at organizations like Huawei, Amazon, HP Labs, and SAP Labs for over 6 years.

Email: ganesha@harmony.one
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gupadhyaya/
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=tR-zCe0AAAAJ&hl=en
Gewu Bu is an associate professor at University Clermont Auvergne in France. He received his PhD of computer science from Sorbonne University. His reaches interests include IoT-dedicated distributed ledgers body-area sensor networks and interfering wireless communications.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gewu-bu-b2a604146/
Kilian Rausch is currently heading product at the [OpenDEX project](https://opendex.network/). He holds a Master’s degree in Information Systems from Technical University of Munich and his work & research focuses on solving problems of cross-chain decentralized exchange networks which are based on payment channels. This, among others, involves the “free option problem”, distributed reputation scores and defining a protocol standard. He previously served as Product Director at Exchange Union and Product Manager of Mobi, a mobile bitcoin wallet designed for everyday people at BTC China.

Email: kilrau@pm.me
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kilrau/
Lucas Soriano del Pino received his Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in 2018. Shortly after, he joined CoBloX, a blockchain research lab based in Sydney. Since then he has been working on COMIT (https://comit.network/). He particularly enjoys implementing novel cryptographic protocols.
Martin Westerkamp is a PhD candidate at the research group of Service-centric Networking at Technische Universität Berlin. His current research interests relate to Blockchain-Interoperability with a focus on Cross-Chain Smart Contract interaction and migration. Before joining TU Berlin, he obtained his Master’s degree in Information Systems from the University of Münster in 2017. During exchanges at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), South Korea, and the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIMC), India, he gained knowledge in the fields of mobile networks and protocol design.

Email: westerkamp@tu-berlin.de
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martin-westerkamp-851398157/
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=87krzZcAAAAJ
Maurice Herlihy has an A.B. in Mathematics from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from M.I.T. He has served on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University and the staff of DEC Cambridge Research Lab. He is the recipient of the 2003 Dijkstra Prize in Distributed Computing, the 2004 Gödel Prize in theoretical computer science, the 2008 ISCA influential paper award, the 2012 Edsger W. Dijkstra Prize, and the 2013 Wallace McDowell award. He received a 2012 Fulbright Distinguished Chair in the Natural Sciences and Engineering Lecturing Fellowship, and he is fellow of the ACM, a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Google Scholar: http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Ezrt3pkAAAAJ
WebSite: http://portal.acm.org/author_page.cfm?id=81100151794
Mohsen Lesani is an assistant professor at the Computer Science and Engineering Department of the University of California, Riverside. His research interests span the areas of verification and synthesis, and concurrent and distributed computing. He spent his postdoc at MIT and obtained his PhD from UCLA. He received the NSF CAREER award in 2020. His research has been recognized as SIGPLAN Research Highlight in 2019 and received the distinguished paper award at OOPSLA’18.

WebSite: https://www.cs.ucr.edu/~lesani/
Pedro Moreno-Sanchez received his PhD degree in Computer Science from Purdue University (USA) in 2018. Prior to joining the IMDEA Software Institute in October 2020, Pedro held a postdoctoral position at Technical University of Vienna (Austria). During his PhD, he was also a visiting student at Ripple Labs (USA), IBM-Research Zurich (Switzerland). He received his bachelor and master degree in Computer Science from University of Murcia (Spain). During his master, he was a visiting student at Philips Research Europe (The Netherlands).

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pedro-moreno-sanchez-57b72447/
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=-IER53IAAAAJ
Peter Robinson is a technical director and applied cryptographer working in ConsenSys Software’s R&D group on Filecoin Retrieval Market and Cross-Blockchain technologies. He has twenty-three granted patents in fields ranging from distributed computing, cryptography, blockchain, and virtualisation to graphical password design. He holds a Bachelor of Computer Engineering and a Masters of Business Administration from Queensland University of Technology, a Masters of Telecommunications Engineering from University of Wollongong, is a graduate of the International Space University, and is currently completing a PhD at University of Queensland part-time with the thesis topic, Cross-Blockchain Communications. Peter is co-chair of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance’s Crosschain Interoperability Task Force.

Email: peter.robinson@consensys.net
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-robinson-98a0061
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=QHvuxTYAAAAJ&hl=en
Peter Somogyvari is a software engineer/architect with a BS. in computer science and a longtime, deep interest in artificial intelligence research and fin-tech. Thought leader in the open source software community and the author of a successful project related to the Internet of Things and more specifically Bluetooth Low Energy. Early adopter of technologies/methodologies/design patterns that promise to boost productivity and inspire creative thinking.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-somogyvari/
Dr. Raghavendra Ramesh is a researcher working in Automated Verification team of Consensys Software R&D. He completed his Ph.D from the Department of Computer Science and Automation, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, in the research area of formal verification and security. At Oracle Labs, leveraging his academic background, he worked on building industrial scale static analysis tools. At Consensys he has worked in the area of interoperable blockchains, and is currently working on automated verification of correctness of consensus protocols.
He practises Raja yoga based meditation under the tutelage of Sri Suresh Kumar Makam, Bangalore.

Email: raghavendra.ramesh@consensys.net
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raghavendra-ramesh-0a418051/
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=JZik0U0AAAAJ&hl=en
Rafael Belchior concluded his M.Sc. at Instituto Superior Técnico (Técnico Lisboa), gratefully advised by Prof. André Vasconcelos and Prof. Miguel Correia. He is now a researcher at INESC-ID and Ph.D. student at Técnico Lisboa. Researching the intersection of blockchain interoperability and security. Very active in the open-source community, he has successfully mentored 2 Hyperledger summer internships. He worked at the Portuguese government, and Linux Foundation as a Blockchain Engineer and he is a lecturer at Técnico Lisboa since 2018.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rafaelpbelchior/
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=B0O3stQAAAAJ&hl=en
Sara Ghaemi has recently received her Master’s degree in Software Engineering and Intelligent Systems from the University of Alberta. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the Amirkabir University of Technology. She is currently a technology specialist at TELUS working on various software engineering projects. Her research interests include distributed ledger technologies and cloud computing.

Email: sghaemi@ualberta.ca
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sara-ghaemi/
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=3uQrxTgAAAAJ&hl=en
Sergio Demian Lerner is an entrepreneur, security researcher since 1994 and cryptocurrency researcher since 2011, having dedicated the last 5 years to the design of sidechains. As an intrapreneur, he co-founded several cryptocurrency companies such as RSK Labs, Coinspect, Coinfabrik and ASICBoost. As a security researcher, he collaborated to strengthen the security of the Bitcoin reference node having responsibly disclosed 9 vulnerabilities. In early 2013, he created QixCoin, the first Turing-complete cryptocurrency. In 2015, he performed security and design audits for Ethereum, and collaborated with its design. Also in 2015 he designed RSK, the first EVM-compatible Bitcoin sidechain with a working hybrid SPV-federated two-way-peg, launched in 2018. In 2016 he designed and proposed a drivechain soft-fork for Bitcoin to decentralize sidechain pegs. In 2019 he designed the HawkClient decentralized EVM to EVM bridge. In 2020 he designed the Powpeg, a security enhancement to the RSK peg using Secure Elements, deployed and activated in December 2020. He designed more sidechain-specific improvements such as Inclusive Merge-Mining, Synchchains and the Flyover bridge system.

Email: sergio@iovlabs.org
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/selerner/
WebSite: bitslog.com
Dr Stefan Schulte is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Informatics at TU Wien. His research interests span the areas of data engineering, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things, and the application of blockchain technologies in the Internet of Things, especially with regard to blockchain interoperability. He is the leader of the recently established Christian Doppler Laboratory “Blockchain Technologies for the Internet of Things” (CDL-BOT). Findings from his research have been published in more than 100 refereed scholarly publications.

Email: s.schulte@dsg.tuwien.ac.at
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefan-schulte-71ba6812/
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=jYD7x3gAAAAJ
Victor Zakhary is a senior software engineer at the Transaction Management Team at Oracle. Prior to joining Oracle, Victor completed his PhD in Computer Science under the supervision of Amr El Abbadi and Divyakant Agrawal at UC Santa Barbara. Victor is interested in blockchains, distributed systems, data privacy and security, and privacy of social network users. His research appeared in top Database and Systems conferences including VLDB, SIGMOD, ICDE, EDBT, S&P, and SIGSPATIAL. His research was awarded the best demonstration award at EDBT’18 and the second best vision paper award at SIGSPATIAL’17. In addition, he was named the outstanding TA of the year in both the Computer Science department and the College of Engineering at UCSB (5 times). Victor has served as a reviewer for several data management conferences and currently he is the co-chair of the Diversity and Inclusion (DnI) at the ICDE conference.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/victorzakhary/
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Cl17DNcAAAAJ&hl=en
Dr. Weijia Zhang is the Vice President of Engineering at Wanchain and Regional Head China for the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. He is co-chair of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance’s Crosschain Interoperability Task Force.

Email: weijia@wanchain.org
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/weijia-zhang-013b84153/
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=UJyzqCwAAAAJ
Yingjie Xue is a PhD candidate at Computer Science Department, Brown University, USA. Her research interests span the area of blockchain technology and distributed computing. She is interested in designing protocols for various applications. She received her Masters degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from University of Science and Technology of China, China.

Email: yingjie_xue@brown.edu
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yingjie-xue-b42074176/
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=8vr_EacAAAAJ&hl=en