ES Fellowship Programme

Prof Yang You obtained his PhD degree in Economics from Harvard University in 2021. He also holds Bachelors in Mathematics and Economics from Tsinghua University. Prior to joining HKU, he worked for Tower Research Capital as quant trader and interned at Facebook Libra. Yang’s research interest lies in Fintech, Economics of Internet, Alternative data & asset prices, Culture & Institution, and Chinese Economy.

Dr Cong Wu is a researcher at Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong. He received his Ph.D. degree at School of Cyber Science and Engineering, Wuhan University in 2022. His research topics include Security and privacy of distributed learning: explore new attack vector in distributed learning, and design the defense strategy to mitigate possible security issues. (Large language model) LLM security: demystify underlying vulnerabilities of LLM, and design security systems founded on LLM. Web3 security: monitor and identify potential financial risks in the Web3 era, such as money laundering and market manipulation. Biometric security: mitigate security vulnerabilities of current biometric systems, and design usable and secure biometric authentication systems for mobile devices.

Lin William Cong is the Rudd Family Professor of Management at Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management, where he also directs the FinTech Initiative. Previously, he taught at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. His research spans financial economics, FinTech, and Economic Data Science, with significant contributions to tokenomics, blockchain analytics, and AI applications in finance. His work is widely recognized, featured in top journals and major outlets like Bloomberg and The Economist, and has garnered numerous awards. Cong advises various FinTech and investment firms, including Blackrock and Chainlink, and governmental bodies such as the SEC. He has also highlighted key issues in cryptocurrency, including environmental impacts and market manipulations. He holds a Ph.D. in Finance and an MS in Statistics from Stanford University, and dual degrees from Harvard University, graduating summa cum laude. Cong is a noted speaker on technology, finance, and China-U.S. relations.

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 a renowned digital governance, technology, and data policy expert. He is the Director of Policy Research and Senior Research Fellow at the MBR School of Government. Previously, he was at Harvard Kennedy School and the LKY School of Public Policy. A computer engineer with a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Oxford, Salem is recognised among the top 100 influencers in Digital Government. He's a fellow in several organisations, including DGS, WGS, and the AI Ethics Advisory Board. His key publications include the Arab SDGs Index, the Global Economic Diversification Index, and the Arab Social Media Report series.

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.

Dr. Eleni Papadonikolaki is an Associate Professor at TU Delft's Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, heading the Integral Design & Management section. She also serves as an executive coach and management consultant with Digital Outlook. Previously at UCL, she founded the MSc Digital Engineering Management program. Eleni's research focuses on managing digital technology interfaces in complex international projects. An author of approximately 100 peer-reviewed publications, she has secured and executed collaborative projects funded by European and UK research councils.

Dr. Nicholas MacGregor Garcia is a Lecturer of Information Systems at the National University of Singapore and the Industry Relations Co-Director of the NUS Fintech Lab. Awaiting his Ph.D. from New York University, he already holds degrees in Chemical Engineering and Information Systems Management from UC Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Garcia teaches Fintech and Blockchain at NUS and is developing a new Smart Systems and AI Governance curriculum. His industry experience includes roles at Intel, IBM, and EA Games. His research focuses on the sociology, ethics, development, and governance of fintech and data science, combining data science tools with traditional qualitative social science methods. He has presented at various conferences and published in the Journal Open Linguistics.

Destefanis is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Brunel University and a Visiting Professor at the University of Cagliari, Italy. He co-heads the London SmartBridgeLab and has previously been a Senior Lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire and a postdoctoral researcher at both Brunel University and the Computer Research Institute of Montreal. His expertise lies in Empirical Software Engineering (ESE), focusing on improving software quality and the developer experience through studying the interactions between technical, human, and socio-economic factors in software engineering. Destefanis employs data mining, machine learning, and time series analysis to derive insights from software repositories, which has led to significant industry collaborations. He has also made impactful contributions to Blockchain Technologies and Smart Contracts, including around 20 co-authored patents that enhance network-level anonymity, scalability, and IoT integration. His research also addresses the financial sector’s adaptation of blockchain technologies, aiming to enhance operational efficiency and security.

Lukasz, Professor at the University of Edinburgh and Programme Director at The Alan Turing Institute, leads partnerships with organisations like the National Office for Statistics and HSBC. He's the Principal Investigator for the FAIR program, focusing on AI's responsible use in finance, and a co-Investigator at the UK Centre for Greening Finance & Investment. An affiliated member of the Oxford-Man Institute, his previous role was at the University of Oxford. His research covers quantitative finance and machine learning, with current work on mechanism design, risk, and multiagent reinforcement learning in Web 3.

Tomaso Aste is a professor of complexity science at UCL, where he is also co-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.

Professor Yuan is Head of Finance at LSE and an MIT Economics Ph.D. graduate who formerly worked at J. P. Morgan's Emerging Markets Trading Desk. Her research delves into macro-finance and asset pricing, focusing on liquidity in markets with information and friction. She has explored crisis propagation in international finance and the impact of benchmark securities on market liquidity. Currently, she investigates liquidity and stability in financial institutions, including DeFi, the effects of digital payment technologies, and theories of (digital) money and public liquidity. Yuan, a member of FMG and CEPR, received the Houblon-Norman Fellowship and contributes to policy research for central banks and financial regulators.

John Augustine is an associate professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, where he founded the Blockchain Innovation Centre and the Cryptography, Cybersecurity, and Distributed Trust group. He previously held roles at the Tata Research Development and Design Centre and at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

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 University and holds a D.Phil from the University of Oxford.

Professor Saleh is a leading authority on the economic design of blockchains, contributing to the development of both blockchain consensus protocols and business applications. His work, published in top scholarly journals, has earned him a place among the most widely cited blockchain researchers globally. He serves on the editorial boards of Management Science and the World Scientific Annual Review of Fintech and is a founding member of the Crypto and Blockchain Economic Research (CBER) Forum. His academic background includes a PhD in Finance from NYU's Stern School of Business and degrees in Operations Research Engineering from Columbia and Cornell University.

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 and the director of the Summer School: Deep Dive into Blockchain and the Certificate of Advanced Studies on Blockchain.

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.

Agostino Capponi, an Associate Professor at Columbia University's IEOR Department, specialises in financial technology, market microstructure, systemic risk, and economic networks. His work has received funding from NSF, DARPA, DOE, IBM, GRI, Ripple, and Ethereum, earning accolades like the 2018 NSF CAREER award and a JP Morgan AI Research Faculty award. Agostino is a fellow of the crypto and blockchain economics research forum, an academic fellow of Alibaba's Luohan academy, and holds editorial roles in several journals, including Management Science, Mathematics and Financial Economics, and Operations Research Letters. He's also a former Chair of the SIAG/FME Activity Group, the INFORMS Finance Section, and the founding director of Columbia's Center for Digital Finance and Technology.