Team

Leadership

The DLT Science Foundation was founded and is led by Dr. Paolo Tasca and Nikhil Vadgama, born out of their desire to speed up the adoption of distributed ledger technology (DLT) in both business and society and to facilitate complex, non-linear interactions and co-creation processes between academia, industry, and government.

Paolo Tasca

Founder

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Paolo Tasca

Nikhil Vadgama

Founder

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Nikhil Vadgama

Nikhil Vadgama serves as the Programme Director of the award-winning Master in Financial Technology at University College London, and as the Deputy Director of the UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies. With extensive experience working with global stakeholders from government, industry, and central banks, Nikhil's background spans a variety of roles in the fintech, real estate, and education sectors including launching a challenger Bank in the UK, Europe and US.

Advisory Board

The DSF is supported by a network of leading industry and academic experts from across the globe.

Aya Nuray Gokalp

Advisory Board Member

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Aya Nuray Gokalp

Aya brings enormous advisory expertise to the DSF in both the public and private sectors given her active involvement across multiple web3.0 focused accelerators and VCs either as Founder, Partner or Advisor along with her position as an expert evaluator of blockchain projects for the European Commission. A polyglot who speaks eight languages, Aya’s Computer Science degree provided the perfect foundation for exploring the blockchain space as early as 2014, working for ABN AMRO Bank.

Boris Battistini

Advisory Board Member

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Boris Battistini

Dr. Boris Battistini is a Director at Metellus AG, a private investment office in Zurich, specialised in venture capital, private equity and direct investments. He was a Senior Research Fellow in Entrepreneurship at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) and a Co-Founder of the ETH Corporate Innovation Lab. He was a Co-Founder and Board Director of the Swiss Finance and Technology Association and led the Global Corporate Venturing Initiative of Bain&Co and ETH.

Caterina Rindi

Advisory Board Member

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Caterina Rindi

Caterina Rindi has been involved in the peer-to-peer, blockchain, and open-source ecosystem since 2013, lending this expertise to to start-ups, foundations, and corporate clients in industries spanning fintech, P2P collaborative economies, consumer products, governance, academia, and healthcare. Her current role is the Director of Community and Developer Relations for the Open-Source Team at G-Research. Caterina speaks Italian and Spanish, and is regular speaker on the DLT conference circuit.

Jason Loh

Advisory Board Member

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Jason Loh

Over the course of my 25 year career, I have founded 4 startups and a non-profit, and led M&A and venture investments for an investment fund. My industry experience is in Web3, e-commerce, and real estate; with a particular focus on leveraging Web3 technologies to tackle challenges in climate change and financial inclusion.

Marcus Treacher

Advisory Board Member

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Marcus Treacher

Marcus Treacher is a global payments and blockchain expert, with 30 years' experience building international businesses focused on digital and emerging technology payment infrastructure. Marcus has held global leadership roles with household names such as Citigroup, HSBC, and blockchain disruptor Ripple, and has served on the boards of SWIFT, CHAPS and RippleNet. He currently sits on the board of CB Growth Holdings, the parent company of ClearBank, and RTGS Global advising on strategic growth.

Ralf Glabischnig

Advisory Board Member

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Ralf Glabischnig

Ralf Glabischnig has over two decades of experience in leading and building technology companies and is at the forefront of the largest global blockchain ecosystems: Crypto Valley (Switzerland & Liechtenstein) and Crypto Oasis (Middle East). As founder, partner, and major shareholder of more than 20 companies and investor in 130+ startups through various venture capital structures, he is actively shaping the future of WEB3.

Samuel Chadwick

Advisory Board Member

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Samuel Chadwick

As head of the UBS Next Incubator, an internal corporate accelerator, Samuel is ideally placed to help the DSF bring novel DLT-focused ideas to market, Having joined UBS in 2019 as the Head of the DLT Center of Excellence, UBS was recognised by Forbes as a Top 50 company in the field of blockchain. Previously head of the blockchain strategy at Refinitiv, a global provider of financial market data and infrastructure, he also co-founded the Crypto Valley Association in Switzerland.

Scientific Committee

The Scientific Committee of the DLT Science Foundation is composed of accomplished academics and researchers who advise the direction of research at the Foundation. The committee consists of one representative per University Network Member (rotated every year), plus the Head of Science and Board Directors of the DSF. They leverage their expertise, backgrounds, and networks to identify key areas of scientific exploration in the field of blockchain and distributed ledger technology.

Jiahua Xu

Head of Science

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Jiahua Xu

Dr. Jiahua Xu is a Lecturer in Financial Computing at UCL, where she teaches Blockchain Technologies and Machine Learning in Finance. She is an award-winning researcher at the university's Centre for Blockchain Technologies, and serves as the Programme Director of the MSc Emerging Digital Technologies under the Computer Science Department. Author of over 10 academic papers in DLT, Dr. Xu teaches FinTech courses at numerous prominent global institutions.

Claudio J. Tessone (UZH)

Scientific Committee Member

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Claudio J. Tessone (UZH)

Claudio J. Tessone is the co-founder and Chairman of the University of Zurich (UZH) Blockchain Center. He is also a Professor of Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies at the UZH Informatics Department, as well as the director of the Summer School: Deep Dive into Blockchain and the Certificate of Advanced Studies on Blockchain. 

Guy S. Liu (PKU)

Scientific Committee Member

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Guy S. Liu (PKU)

Guy S. Liu is a Professor and Director of the Peking University HSBC Business School (PKU PHBS). He was also previously Head of Department at Brunel Universty and holds a D.Phil from the University of Oxford.

John Augustine (IIT)

Scientific Committee Member

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John Augustine (IIT)

John Augustine is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, where he co-founded the Blockchain Lab and the Cybersecurity Centre. Previously, he held roles at the Tata Research Development and Design Centre and at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Nicholas MacGregor Garcia (NUS)

Scientific Committee Member

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Nicholas MacGregor Garcia (NUS)

Nicholas MacGregor Garcia is a lecturer at the National University of Singapore (NUS) where he teaches and develops the curriculum for fintech, blockchain, and AI governance and ethics.He is also the Co-Director of NUS Fintech lab where he fosters collaborations between industry and academia to nurture a knowledge ecosystem.He has a Ph.D in Philosophy from NYU Stern, a Master's in Information Systems Management from Carnegie Mellon University and BS in Chemical Engineering from Berkeley.

Tomaso Aste (UCL)

Scientific Committee Member

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Tomaso Aste (UCL)

Tomaso Aste is a professor of complexity science at University College London (UCL), where he is also founder and Scientific Director of the Centre for Blockchain Technologies (UCL CBT), head of the Financial Computing and Analytics Group, and vice director of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Financial Computing & Analytics.

DSF Team

At the heart of the foundation, you’ll find a talented, collaborative and decentralised team of individuals whose dedication brings to life the bold vision to change the world with emerging technologies. Bringing together academics, developers, and multidisciplinary experts, we take pride in being open, connected, and inclusive - while taking an evidence-first decision-making approach to deliver each one’s best work.

LEADERSHIP

Paolo Tasca

Founder

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Paolo Tasca

Dr. Paolo Tasca is a Professor at University College London and a digital economist with a specialisation in distributed systems. He is also the founder of the award-winning UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies, ranked seventh best university globally for blockchain and largest academic research centres in the blockchain field.In addition to his academic achievements, Dr. Tasca is a seasoned blockchain entrepreneur with several successful exits and has served as a special advisor on blockchain technologies for a variety of government and industry stakeholders worldwide, including the United Nations, and several central banks.Victoria has been listed on Innovate Finance’s Women in Fintech Power list on multiple occasions. She was nominated for UK’s Innovation Counsel of the Year award prior to leaving Barclays for her work helping to launch the Barclays Female Innovators Lab and has been named as one of the most influential women in blockchain by UK Government’s APPG on Blockchain and AI – which has led her to give evidence and attend multiple UK Government advisory committee hearings.

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