Fellows are leading researchers whose work exemplifies the mission of the DSF.
They help the foundation to design, develop and deliver a set of activities around education, research and innovation, ultimately contributing to DLT knowledge diffusion.
The Fellowship programme aims at:
Building a collaborative ecosystem of DLT-based projects, keen to inform policymakers through scientific reasoning and relevant case studies.
Creating a world where DLT allows value exchange in a more efficient, transparent and equitable manner, enhancing the trust infrastructure of the 21st century.
Francesco is Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Birmingham where his work focus on integrating DLT into socio-economic processes. He teaches Blockchain and Financial Applications within the MSc FinTech program and serves as Research Associate at the UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies. Francesco holds a PhD in Economics jointly awarded by King’s College London and the National University of Singapore. Before joining academia, he worked at J.P. Morgan and UBS.
DSF Fellows receive support for developing their initiatives, access to datasets and tools developed by DSF, and the opportunity to network with some of the greatest minds in the field.
Michael Heinrich is a Professor of Ethnopharmacology and Medicinal Plant Research (Pharmacognosy) and was until 2018 the head of the research cluster / Centre ‘Biodiversity and Medicines’ at the UCL School of Pharmacy. From 2016 until 2013 serves as the joint chair of UCL’s Research Ethics Committee (with Dr. L. Ang, Institute of Education). The group's research is based on a transdisciplinary perspective integrating approaches from the biomedical and social sciences with an overall aim of tackling the fast changing global health needs. This includes the potential of new technologies including Blockchain in solving core challenges in healthcare.
Fadi Salem is an international authority in digital governance, technology and data policy domains. He is the Director of Policy Research and a Senior Research Fellow at the MBR School of Government. Earlier, he was a Research Associate at the Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) and a Fellow at the LKY School of Public Policy (LKY SPP). Fadi is a computer engineer and holds a PhD in Public Policy from the University of Oxford. He was selected among the 100 Worldwide Most Influential People in Digital Government (Apolitical), and is a fellow of several influential bodies, including the Digital Government Society Board (DGS), the Global Council on SDG 16 (WGS), the AI Ethics Advisory Board (Dubai Digital), the Governance Implications of AI (ISO SC42 WG), Jusoor, and the DLT Science Foundation. Some of his leading publications include the Arab SDGs Index (www.ArabSDGIndex.com), the Global Economic Diversification Index (www.EconomicDiversification.com), the Arab Social Media Report series (www.ArabSocialMediaReport.com), and the Dubai Policy Review Journal (DubaiPolicyReview.ae).
Te Bao is an Associate Professor of Economics at the School of Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University Singapore. He obtained his PhD from CeNDEF, University of Amsterdam. His main research interests are computational economics, behavioral finance, economics of blockchain, social media and experimental economics. He is currently an Associate Editor of Singapore Economic Review, and served as a Member of Advisory Council of the Society for Computational Economics from 2018 to 2021.
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.
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.
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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.
Carsten Sørensen is an Associate Professor in Digital Innovation at The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where he is also the founder of the mobility@lse research unit. He is furthermore a Senior Editor of the Information Systems Journal, as well as an Associate Editor for Journal of the AIS and the e-Service Journal.
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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.
Amit Kapoor, PhD, is the Honorary Chairman at Institute for Competitiveness, India; Lecturer, USATMC, Stanford University; He is the chair of the Social Progress Imperative & Shared Value Initiative in India. He is an affiliate faculty for the Microeconomics of Competitiveness & Value-Based Health Care Delivery courses of the Institute of Strategy and Competitiveness, Harvard Business School. He has been inducted into the Competitiveness Hall of Fame, which is administered by the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard Business School, in addition to being the recipient of the Ruth Greene Memorial Award by NACRA. Amit is the author of bestsellers “Riding the Tiger” and “The Age of Awakening: The Story of the Indian Economy Since Independence” published by Penguin Random House. He has also authored the “Competitiveness Roadmap for India at 100” with Michael Porter and Christian Ketels. His forthcoming book on India’s Competitiveness is with Amitabh Kant, G20 Sherpa for India.
Dr. Qiuchen Lu's research team facilitates the transformation of built environment towards the ‘3S (Smart, Sustainable, reSilient)’ future through digital technologies (e.g., digital twins). Towards 3S future of built environment, she has established a completed story of Digital Twins in Built Environment, including creating the geometrical digital twins, exploring research and implementations of digital twins and building new values of digital twins from building to city levels. As the lead and first author, her work was published as the very first book related to digital twins in the built environment: Digital Twins for the Built Environment: Fundaments, Principles and Practice.
Professor Yuan received her Ph.D. in Economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to obtaining her Ph.D., she worked briefly in the Emerging Markets Trading Desk at J. P. Morgan (now JPMorgan-Chase). Her academic research focuses on developing macro-finance and asset pricing theories with liquidity implications in environments with information and market frictions and testing their empirical implications. In the past few years, she has examined how crises spread through international financial markets and how introducing benchmark securities such as treasury bonds or stock indices improves the overall market liquidity. She is currently working on issue related to liquidity and financial stability in bank and non-bank financial institutions including DeFi, macro implications of digital payment technologies, and developing applied theories of (digital) money and public liquidity. She is a member of FMG, CEPR and has also received Houblon-Norman Fellowship at the Bank of England. She has also conducted policy research for central banks and financial market regulators.
Terence Tse is a globally recognised educator, author, and speaker. He is professor of finance at Hult International Business School and an affiliate professor at ESCP Business School. Terence is also a co-founder and Executive Director of Nexus FrontierTech, an AI company.
He is a co-author of two international best sellers on Amazon: ”The AI Republic: Building the Nexus Between Humans and Intelligent Automation” and “Understanding How the Future Unfolds: Using DRIVE to Harness the Power of Today's Megatrends.” He is also a co-author of “The Great Remobilization: Strategies and Designs for a Smarter Global Future”. Additionally, Terence wrote “Corporate Finance: The Basics”, now in its 2nd edition.
Terence is also a popular and entertaining commentator and has appeared on many television and radio shows as well as periodicals. He has run seminars and workshops as well as given speeches on technology and digital transformation, megatrends as well as topics in finance and economics for and to some 60 organisations.
Terence started his career as an investment banker at Schroders, Citibank and Lazard Brothers followed by being a consultant at EY focusing on UK financial services. Terence obtained his doctoral degree from the Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, UK.
Dr. Mark Esposito is recognized internationally as a top global thought leader in matters relating to The Fourth Industrial Revolution. He is a global expert of the World Economic Forum and advisor to national governments.
He is Co-Founder at Nexus FrontierTech, an AI scale-up venture. He was inducted in 2016 in the radar of Thinkers50 as one of the 30 most prominent rising business thinkers in the world. He is a Senior Advisor to the Ideation Center of Strategy& at PwC in Dubai and to the UC Berkeley SkyDeck incubator.
In his academic career, Mark has held academic appointments for some of the world’s leading institutions such as Harvard University, University of Cambridge, Hult International Business School, Mohammed Bin Rashid School of Government , Arizona State University and IE Business School. He served as Institutes Council Co-Leader, at the Microeconomics of Competitiveness program (MOC) at the Institute of Strategy and Competitiveness, at Harvard Business School under the mentorship of Professor Michael E. Porter.
Holding prestigious fellowships at UCL as a Policy Fellow, at University of Cambridge as a Senior Associate, and as Senior Fellow for the Digital Impact Alliance from the United Nations Foundation.
He has authored/co-authored over 150 publications peer and non-peer reviewed, 13 books, among which 2 Amazon bestsellers: Understanding how the Future Unfolds (2017) and The AI Republic (2019).His latest books are: “The Emerging Economies under the Dome of the Fourth Industrial Revolution” with Dr. Amit Kapoor (Cambridge University Press, 2022) and “The Great Remobilization: Strategies and Designs for a Global Smarter World" with Dr. Olaf Groth and Dr. Terence Tse, (MIT University Press, 2023). His next book will be "Digitising the Emerging Economies" ( Cambridge University Press, 2024) His academic journey culminated with a doctoral degree in Business and Economics from Ecole des Ponts Paris Tech, one of France's esteemed Grande Ecole.
Imran Bashir has an MSc in information security from Royal Holloway, University of London. He has a background in software development, solution architecture, infrastructure management, information security, and IT service management. His current focus is on the latest technologies, such as Blockchain, IoT, and quantum computing. He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He loves to write. His book on Blockchain technology, Mastering Blockchain, is a widely accepted standard text on the subject. He is also the author of Blockchain consensus, the first formal book on the subject introducing classical, Blockchain, and Quantum Consensus Protocols. He has worked in various senior technical roles for different organisations around the world.
Professor Saleh is a leading expert on proper economic design of blockchains. His work informs both the design of blockchain consensus protocols (e.g., proof-of-work, proof-of-stake, etc…) and also design of blockchain business applications (e.g., decentralised exchanges, lending platforms, supply chain applications, etc…). His work has been published by the foremost peer-reviewed scholarly journals including Management Science, the Review of Financial Studies, and the Journal of Financial Economics. Moreover, Professor Saleh is among the most widely cited blockchain researchers in the world today, and his work includes the single most widely cited scholarly article on the economic design of the proof-of-stake blockchain consensus protocol.
Professor Saleh serves on the editorial boards of Management Science and the World Scientific Annual Review of Fintech. He is also a founding member and co-organizer of the Crypto and Blockchain Economic Research (CBER) Forum. He holds a PhD in Finance from New York University's Stern School of Business. He also holds graduate and undergraduate degrees in Operations Research Engineering from Columbia University and Cornell University respectively.
