Keynote Speech

Charles (Chuck) Romine, NIST, Technology Laboratory Director

Dr. Charles Romine is Director of the Information Technology Laboratory (ITL). ITL is one of six research Laboratories within the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) with an annual budget of $120 million, nearly 400 employees, and about 200 guest researchers from industry, universities, and foreign laboratories. Within NIST’s traditional role as the overseer of the National Measurement System, ITL is conducting research addressing measurement challenges in information technology as well as issues of information and software quality, integrity, and usability. ITL is also charged with leading the nation in using existing and emerging IT to help meet national priorities, including developing cybersecurity standards, guidelines, and associated methods and techniques, cloud computing, electronic voting, smart grid, homeland security applications, and health information technology. Charles has a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics and B.A. in Mathematics from the University of Virginia.

 

Keynote Speech

Mike DiPetrillo, Senior Director of Blockchain Technologies, VMware

Mike DiPetrillo is the Senior Director of Blockchain Technologies at VMware. In his most recent role he is responsible for advancing the innovations that VMware has made in blockchain with customers, partners, and through open standards. Mike has a long history of developing and launching new, industry changing initiatives at VMware including the initial launch of x86 virtualization with ESX, the initial launch of cloud technologies, cloud-based lab solutions with the VMware Learning Platform, and now blockchain. Prior to VMware Mike spent his time launching the first global VoIP networks, the first global search engines, and many other interesting technologies.

 

 

 

Missing Pieces of Digital Healthcare in 21st Century: Technology, Policy, and Economy

Sean Khozin, MD, MPH, Food And Drug Administration

Dr. Khozin is a thoracic oncologist, associate director at FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence, and director of Information Exchange and Data Transformation (INFORMED), a data science and technology incubator focused on supporting innovations that enhance the agency’s mission of advancing public health. INFORMED is expanding organizational and technical infrastructure for big data analytics at the FDA and conducting foundational research examining modern approaches in evidence generation to support regulatory decisions.

Previously, Dr. Khozin was in private practice in New York City and an entrepreneur specializing in building health information technology systems with telemedicine, remote monitoring, and point-of-care data visualization and advanced analytics capabilities

Where Are Government Agencies Sponsoring Blockchain Networks?

Mark D Fisk, Partner – IBM Global Services Public Sector

Mr. Mark Fisk is a Partner in IBM Digital for Global Business Services focused on the Public Service Industry.  Mr. Fisk has over twenty-five years of experience in executive consulting, release management, project management, software development, and technical leadership roles. As leader of IBM’s Public Service Blockchain initiatives he is working with federal/state governments, higher education institutions, as well as citizen advocates in order to address dilemmas with the current roadblocks which reduce value and prevent trust, transparency, and accountability in today’s business networks. In combination with Blockchain capabilities, Mr. Fisk is leveraging Design Thinking, Cognitive Process Design, Personalization, and technologies such as IoT and Analytics in order to re-imagine how Public Services organizations will work in the future to support the full lifecycle of business network interactions – especially those involving the constituents of government.

 

Blockchain Architecture & Frameworks

Claudio Lima, Ph.D., BEC – Blockchain Engineering Council

Dr. Claudio Lima is an industry thought leader and entrepreneur in Advanced Digital Transformation. He’s the founder of the Blockchain Engineering Council – BEC, promoting the industry advances and intersection of Internet of Things-IoT, Blockchain and Machine Learning/AI. He is leading advanced research and has created the industry vision and project initiatives to develop smart contract-driven IoT autonomous machines (auto-bots), using AI and edge-IOT computing. He’s passionate for Blockchain Distributed Ledger and AI/IoT technologies. He received his Ph.D. in Electronic Engineering in 1995 at University of Kent (England).

Links in the Blockchain: Lessons Mined from Hype & Implementations

Anil John, program manager, Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA) in DHS

Mr. Anil John is the program manager for the identity management project in the Cyber Security Division of the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA) in DHS S&T. The Identity Management project help government program managers with the public and private sector research and development expertise and resources needed to enhance the security and trustworthiness of their programs. In cases where such technologies do not exist or under development, the project makes the necessary investments in applied research, advanced development and technology transition to ensure their availability to the Homeland Security Enterprise. Prior to joining CSD, he was the Technical Lead for the Federal Identity, Credential and Access Management (FICAM) Program at the General Service Administration’s Office of Government-wide Policy, working on identity, credential and access management initiatives that impact the security and privacy of Citizen-to-Government, Business-to-Government and Government-to-Government digital interactions.  With a career spanning the private sector as well as academia, John brings design and development expertise from architecture and implementation, internet scale deployment, and operational expertise at the network, host and application levels. John graduated from the University of Maryland with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a master’s in electric power engineering.

 

From Vision to Reality – the Value and Best Fit for Blockchain in Power Industry

Sherry Li, GE Power Digital Product Leader

Ms. Sherry Li is a Digital Product Leader in GE Power. Sherry works on identifying the opportunities blockchain could bring to the business. She works with cross functional teams in the business to assess the technology, business cases, applications as well as partnership development. She also leads the efforts to accelerate business opportunities for relevant products and offerings. She has been in GE for more than 10 years and Power industry for about 7 years.

Marc Mercuri, Principal Program Manager in Blockchain Engineering, Microsoft

Mr. Marc Mercuri‘s role at Blockchain Engineering, Microsoft spans incubation, product management and lighthouse customer engagement.
Marc’s career has included architecture, consulting, engineering, evangelism, and strategy leadership roles at startups, enterprises, ISVs and CSVs. He has worked in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and the United States and his work has been featured in a number of mainstream media outlets including ABC, Advertising Age, AdWeek, TechCrunch, Ars Technica, the BBC, CNET, the Telegraph, FastCompany, Mashable, Wired, and ZDNet. He has 12 issued patents and 18 patents pending in the areas of blockchain, cloud, mobile, and social. Marc is the author of four books on services and identity. He is also the technical editor of a book on Microservices with Docker on Microsoft Azure.

 

 

Tony Nadalin, Partner Architect, Identity Division, Microsoft

Mr. Anthony Nadalin’s current work encompasses technology standards engagements that play a strategic role in enterprise products, cloud services, operations management, consumer services, social networking, and mobile applications. Policy engagements are also a vital part of Anthony’s job as interactions are not just about protocols and do not occur in a policy vacuum; they are informed by business needs, public policies, and privacy expectations around the globe and thus have may engagements in the policy space throughout the world.

 

 

 

Anant Kadiyala, Director – Blockchain & IoT Industry Solutions, Oracle

Mr. Anant Kadiyala is director of blockchain and IoT industry solutions at Oracle. He is a specialist in digital transformation and applied innovation. Anant is currently building solutions that drive supply chain transparency, visibility and agility. He has published numerous articles and spoken at conferences on applying innovation in the enterprise. Earlier, Anant built a consulting practice that specialized in analytics, IoT, PaaS, and middleware solutions for the Fortune 1000. His teams won multiple industry awards and recognitions for driving visionary customer solutions.

 

Joseph Francis, Principal Director, Digital Supply Chain, Transformation, Communications, Media & Technology,  Accenture

Mr. Joe Rancis is a part of Accenture Consulting’s Communications, Media & Technology Practice, based in San Francisco, focused on Strategy, Network, Process, and Resource transformation for a variety of industries, with an emphasis on High-Tech Manufacturing. He is Accenture’s thought leader for Blockchain in Supply Chain, and is working on a variety of innovative Blockchain projects with their West Coast client base. His experience is focused in large-scale supply chain transformation of supply chain to meet critical business, customer, and financial objectives, leveraging leading-edge technology, balanced with pragmatic operational experience. With a background in High-Tech Supply Chain, and Supply Chain Research, he also has experience in IT, ERP, Heavy Manufacturing, Petrochemical, Defense, and other areas.

 

Blockchain for Smarter Policies, Efficient Regulations, and Better Governance

Combiz Richard Abdolrahimi, Senior Advisor Manager, Deloitte, and former Senior policy advisor, Department of Treasury, Deloitte

Mr. Combiz Richard Abdolrahimi, Esq., J.D., LL.M. is a U.S. national security lawyer, a global emerging technology and innovation strategist at Deloitte, a former regulator and policymaker, and until recently, he served as a senior policy advisor at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Combiz has 11 years of public and private sector experience working with executives on shaping the business, policy, legal, regulatory, and technology dimensions of Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLT), artificial intelligence and machine learning, digital asset technologies and innovations including cryptocurrency and digital fiat currency, tokenization, cybersecurity, crowdfunding, smart city technologies, FinTech and RegTech, smart energy and utilities, banking and financial services, payments, digital identity, privacy, risk management and compliance. He co-authored the first U.S. government primer on how Blockchain can enable innovation in government and the first U.S. government primer on how FinTech can deliver more seamless, safe, efficient, and impactful experiences.

 

Addressing the Data Conundrum: Artificial Intelligence On Blockchain

Miheala Ulieru, Chief Innovator @ Endor.com

Dr. Mihaela Ulieru is a scholar of distributed intelligent systems, having pioneered a series of technologies that are bundled under the collective name of “Blockchain”, which consists of over 200 peer reviewed publications, hundreds of invited keynotes and talks, advisor to governments on the adoption of emerging technologies to improve the lives of citizens, as well as mentor to many successful entrepreneurs. In her capacity as Member of the Global Agenda Council on Data Driven Development, Dr. Ulieru advocated to include blockchain among the Top 10 future and emerging technologies at the World Economic Forum in 2016.

Dr. Ulieru is also President of the IMPACT Institute for the Digital Economy, aiming to capitalize on her achievements as the Canada Research Chair in Adaptive Information Infrastructures for the eSociety which she held for five years since July 2005. In 2007 she was appointed to the Science, Technology and Innovation Council of Canada by the Minister of Industry, to advise the government and provide foresight on innovation issues related to the ICT impact on Canada’s economic development and social well-being against international standards of excellence. In 2006 she was appointed to the Science and Engineering Research Council of Singapore, and in 2010 she was appointed Expert in ICT-Enabled Innovation at the Executive Authority for Scientific Research and Innovation of Romania, and as Adjunct Research Professor at Carleton University, in Ottawa. As a tenured professor at the University of New Brunswick (2005-2012) she founded the Adaptive Risk Management Laboratory with Canada Foundation for Innovation sponsorship. She led several large scale projects funded by NSERC, DRDC, CANARIE and NBIF targeting the management of complex situations through more organic ways of governance.

 

Blockchain’s role in strengthening security and privacy

Dr Nir Kshetri, Professor at Bryan School of Business and Economics

Nir Kshetri is Professor at University of North Carolina-Greensboro and a research fellow at Kobe University. He holds a Ph D in Business Administration from University of Rhode Island. He has authored eight books. His 2014 book, Global Entrepreneurship: Environment and Strategy (Routledge: New York) has been selected as an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice Magazine. He has published about 120 articles in various journals. Nir worked as a consultant for the Asian Development Bank during 2017-2018. He also participated as lead discussant at the Peer Review meeting of the UN’s Information Economy Report 2013 and 2015. Nir was the winner of 2016 Bryan School Senior Research Excellence Award. He is also a two time winner of the Pacific Telecommunication Council’s Meheroo Jussawalla Research Paper Prize (2010 and 2008). Nir has been quoted/interviewed and/or his work has been featured by hundreds of media outlets worldwide such as Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, Scientific American, Bloomberg TV, CBS News, TV Mundo (Peru), ABF TV (Brazil), Fortune, Time, Christian Science Monitor, SF Gate, U.S. News & World Report, New Boston Post, Observer and Salon. In March 2018, he gave a TED Talk about the potential roles of cryptocurrencies in fighting poverty.

 

Matthew D. Green, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University

Matthew Daniel Green is a cryptographer and security technologist. Green is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute. He specializes in applied cryptography, privacy-enhanced information storage systems, anonymous cryptocurrencies, elliptic curve crypto-systems, and satellite television piracy. He is a member of the teams that developed the Zerocoin anonymous cryptocurrency and Zerocash. He has been involved in the groups that exposed vulnerabilities in RSA BSAFE, Speedpass and E-ZPass.

 

 

 

 

 

Frederic de Vaulx, PMP, VP Prometheus Computing LLC, ACT IAC Emerging Technology Blockchain Working Group Co-Chair

Frederic de Vaulx is Vice President of Prometheus Computing where he helps develop the vision, innovation and strategy of the company. He is also a Senior Software Engineer and Program Manager overseeing the design, architecture and development of custom software applications for Prometheus’ federal and commercial clients. Frederic is a member of the ACT-IAC Emerging Technology Community of Interest and Co-Chair of the Blockchain Working Group that published a blockchain primer in late 2017 and a first version of the blockchain playbook in early 2018.

 

 

 

 

Jeff Simpson, Blockchain Sales Program, Cisco

Jeff Simpson is a long time Cisco veteran who has held various roles across the company supporting financial services, service provider, US public sector and commercial customers. He has focused on customer solutions with a special interest in lifecycle services, operations and new technology adoption. Most recently Jeff has been involved with Cisco’s blockchain initiatives and blockchain Sales programs. Jeff holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Delaware.

 

 

 

 

Barriers to Adoption of Blockchain in Healthcare and Across Industries: Lighting a Path Forward

Heather Flannery, Co-Founder, Blockchain in Healthcare Global and Co-Chair, Blockchain Task Force, HIMSS


Heather Flannery is the Co-Founder of Blockchain in Healthcare Global, and Co-Chair of Blockchain Task Force, HIMSS. Blockchain in Healthcare Global (BiHG) is a new 501(c)6 membership organization within the IEEE ISTO (ieee-isto.org) working to mitigate the barriers to adoption of blockchain, and converging innovations such as AI and IoMT, in healthcare delivery and the life and social sciences while advancing progress in scientific reproducibility, medical ethics, human rights, and global inclusion. BiHG is developing a trans-jurisdictional policy roadmap and regulatory agenda, seeding industry self-regulation, and driving infrastructure and standards development and adoption in support of the common business interests of its members and for social good.

 

 

Why Standards: Scaling the Enterprise Blockchain Ecosystem

Yorke E. Rhodes III, Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) Member, and Global Business Strategist, Blockchain & Identity, Microsoft

Yorke E. Rhodes III is a passionate technologist with broad interests, always drawn to the next new shiny object. He earned a BS in Computer Science from NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. He has worked in industry for over 20 years, in software across large enterprises such as Microsoft and IBM as well as startups in wireless, mobile, digital marketing and ecommerce. He had a short stint on the client side at Goldman Sachs Investment Bank building their first wireless internet ingress and advising bankers in wireless, telecom and media. His perspectives are informed by his experiences as a young software developer where he witnessed the beginnings of client server databases, the OS/2 demise, clamshell laptops, obscure languages like ada, lisp and paradox and the birth of the internet as we know it today. While ignoring bitcoin for many years, his interest was piqued by blockchain during the summer of 2015 with the launch of ethereum. He is currently on his second tour at Microsoft working on partner and corporate strategy around blockchain and looking at various levers to help mature and accelerate this exciting nascent industry. Yorke is also an Adjunct Professor at NYU in the Masters of Integrated Marketing & Leadership programs where he has taught Digital Marketing, Ecommerce and Intrapreneurship and is currently developing a course on the user centric economy called #OurNextEconomy.

 

Ethical Blockchain Design and Implementation

Cara LaPointe, Senior Fellow, Beeck Center for Social Impact & Innovation, Georgetown University

Cara LaPointe is a futurist who has spent her career focused on the intersection of leadership, technology, policy and ethics. She came to Georgetown from the White House, where she was the Interim Director of the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships, a non-partisan leadership development program. Cara spent over two decades in the United States Navy, most recently serving as the hand-selected Chief of Staff to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Unmanned Systems. In that position, she helped lead the Navy’s efforts on unmanned and autonomous systems in all domains. She is a patented engineer, having co-designed a passive diver thermal protection system for deep-sea divers. At the Deep Submergence Lab of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Cara conducted research in underwater robotics focusing on deep-ocean autonomous underwater vehicle navigation and sensor fusion algorithms.

 

Biometric Authentication via IEEE 2410 and Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs)

Dr. John Callahan, CTO, Veridium

Dr. John Callahan is Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Veridium, a leading biometric authentication company.  Dr. Callahan recently served as Vice-Chair of the committee for the IEEE 2410-2017 Biometric Open Protocol Standard (BOPS) that specifies secure, end-to-end mobile and server-side biometric processing, encryption in-transit and at-rest, and FIDO compatibility.  He also served as the Associate Director for Information Dominance at the US Navy’s Office of Naval Research Global (ONRG) London UK office from 2010-2014 via an Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) assignment from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL) in Laurel, Maryland USA. Prior to JHU, he was a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at West Virginia University (WVU) in Morgantown, WV USA and research director at the NASA Independent verification and Validation (IV&V) Facility in Fairmont, WV USA. He completed his PhD in Computer Science at the University of Maryland, College Park USA.

 

Blockchain Interoperability & Survivability 

Thomas Hardjono, CTO, Connection Science and Engineering, MIT

Thomas Hardjono is the Technical Director of the MIT Trust::Data Consortium. He devoted several years at MIT running the MIT Kerberos Consortium. Prior to this he was a Distinguished Engineer at Bay Networks, Principal Scientist at VeriSign PKI, and held CTO roles at several start-ups. Thomas has been at the forefront of several identity, trust and cybersecurity initiatives in industry, ranging from network multicast security, IoT Security, trusted computing to scalable identity systems, P2P networks and blockchain systems. Thomas has authored several technical papers, patents and books covering cryptography, networking, identity and blockchain security.

 

Smart Legal Contracts: A Standardized Approach

Houman Shadab, Co-Director, The Accord Project

Houman Shadab is co-director of the Accord Project for open source smart legal contract code and protocols. Houman is also a cofounder of Clause and a prolific and influential expert in law, business, and technology with over a decade of experience researching and teaching in academia and public policy at New York Law School, Cornell Tech, and other institutions. He has testified before the federal government several times and is widely published and cited

 

 

 

 

Dr. Sylvere Krima, Senior Consultant, Engisis LLC – Research Associate, NIST

Dr. Sylvere Krima is a research associate at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and a senior consultant at Engisis LLC. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of Burgundy, France in 2013.He focuses on developing methodologies and tools to implement standard-based interoperability and data traceability through the product lifecycle and supply chain. He currently co-leads a blockchain for Smart Manufacturing project at NIST that focuses on securing the digital thread. Dr. Krima is a co-chair of the Blockchain for Industrial Applications Community Of Interest (COI) that focuses on use cases such as Smart Manufacturing, Internet of Things, e-health, Autonomous Vehicles, Artificial Intelligence, Robotic Process Automation, and Smart Cities. Dr. Krima is also a member of the US TAG for ISO/TC 307 “Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies”.

 

 

Fred Douglis, Chief Research Scientist, Perspecta Labs

Fred Douglis is a Chief Research Scientist at Perspecta Labs since January 2018, where he works on applied research in the areas of blockchain, network optimization, and security. He was previously with companies including Matsushita, AT&T, IBM, and (Dell) EMC. His research interests included storage, distributed systems, web tools and performance, and mobile computing. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from U.C. Berkeley.

Douglis is a member of the IEEE Computer Society Board of Governors and a fellow of the IEEE. He has volunteered with IEEE-CS since 1993 and was named a member of the Golden Core in 2012. He served as EIC of IEEE Internet Computing from 2007-2010 and has been on its editorial board since 1999. He is also on the editorial boards of IEEE Transactions on Computers and IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing, as well as ACM Transactions on Storage. He formed the IEEE-CS Technical Committee on the Internet, chairing it from 1997-2000, and previously chaired the TC on Operating Systems from 1996-1998

 

Dan Larimer, CTO, Block.one

Dan Larimer specializes in software creation and development and has founded several successful companies that focus on innovative technology, ranging from virtual reality simulators to unmanned vehicle control systems to several second-generation blockchain companies – most notably BitShares, Steemit, and EOSIO. A co-founder of Block.one, he is the inventor of the widely adopted “Delegated Proof of Stake” and “Decentralized Autonomous Corporation” concepts. Dan has been involved in the blockchain space since 2009 and is considered a blockchain industry leader for his work in designing free market solutions to secure life, liberty, and property.

 

Sri Nikhil Gupta, Research Engineer, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)

Sri Nikhil Gupta Gourisetti is a Grid – cybersecurity research engineer at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). During his research engagement at PNNL, Sri Nikhil has worked on several smart grid cyber-physical security projects addressing the security and grid systems interaction challenges and needs of critical facilities and infrastructure. He has been actively involved in research projects on security engineering solutions and responses for critical infrastructure. He is the Co-PI for DOE Cybersecurity projects such Keyless Infrastructure Security Solution – a blockchain-based system for critical infrastructure; Mitigation of External-exposure for Energy Delivery Systems; Cybersecurity Framework. He is one of the lead authors for DOE-PNNL led buildings cybersecurity framework and the lead developer for vulnerability assessment tools. He is the Co-PI for the development of on-going cyber-physical security non-intrusive applications. He is a technical lead for an incentive-based hardware-in-the-loop project where the grid simulation software and hardware systems interact in real-time. Under a DARPA project, he also led a team to develop red team – blue team cyber-physical attack scenarios for grid systems.

Gilles Fedak, PhD CEO and co-founder of iExec Blockchain Tech

Gilles Fedak is CEO & co-founder of iExec: Blockchain-based Decentralized Cloud Computing. Before that, Gilles Fedak was a permanent INRIA research scientist at ENS-Lyon, France. After receiving his Ph.D degree from University Paris Sud in 2003, he followed a postdoctoral fellowship at University California San Diego. Gilles Fedak has produced pioneering software and algorithms in the field of Grid and Cloud Computing that allow people to easily harness large parallel systems consisting of thousands of machines distributed on the Internet. He co-authored more than 80 peer-reviewed scientific papers and won two Best Paper awards. He recently participated to several hearings about blockchain technology for the French senate and government.

 

Theodore Waz, President, The Opinion Economy

An entrepreneur and investor, Ted Waz is passionate about innovative technologies and relentlessly seeks opportunities that deliver high returns to investors while making a difference is people’s lives. Focus areas include AI/machine learning, blockchain, cryptocurrencies, edge services, cybersecurity, quantum & superchip technologies. Ted spent over 20 years serving and leading Fortune 50 companies such as, UnitedHealth Group, WellPoint, Emdeon, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, Mubadala Development Corporation and other startups delivering transparency, cross functional collaboration, sustainability, and efficiency. He has an undergraduate degree from Manhattanville College, and attended graduate executive programs at Harvard University (GSE), Harvard Medical School (SQIL), and Oxford University-Said Business School (BSP).

 

 

Jon E. Wright, Director, Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox

Jon E. Wright is a director in Sterne Kessler’s Trial & Appellate and Electronics Practice Groups. He co-chairs the firm’s appellate practice, and is a past co-chair of its PTO litigation  practice. Jon focuses primarily on contested proceedings before the USPTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board, and on appeals of those cases to the United States Court of Appeals for the  Federal Circuit. He is a recognized leader in inter partes review practice where there is co-pending district court litigation or a USITC investigation. He is familiar with the challenges faced by  both patent owners and petitioners in these complex proceedings, often works closely with trial counsel as part of an inter-disciplinary team.