Leadership

Angelo De Caro joined IBM Research – Zurich in May 2015. His research is focused on the Hyperledger fabric and the privacy and cryptography of the blockchain.

Angelo received his PhD in Computer Science in 2013 from the University of Salerno, in Italy, under the supervision of Prof. Carlo Blundo and Prof. Giuseppe Persiano.

After his PhD, he worked with Dr. Tatsuaki Okamoto at NTT, Japan, in 2013 and with Prof. Michel Abdalla at École normale supérieure, France, in 2014-2015.

Angelo has been also engaged in several EU projects including ECRYPTII (European Network of Excellence in Cryptology II) and TREDISEC (Trust-aware, REliable and Distributed Information SEcurity in the Cloud).

His research interests are in theoretical cryptography and its applications to the blockchain and the cloud.

Arnaud was a staff member of the W3C and the X Consortium and has represented IBM in several standards and open source organizations for many years. Arnaud has been involved in every aspect of the Open Technologies development process. This includes the technical, strategic, political, and legal aspects. Arnaud was editor of several key Web specifications including HTML and DOM and was involved in high profile open source projects such as Xerces, the Apache XML parser, and the X Window System. Arnaud made his first steps in Open Source in 1990 with the release of the XPM library which is still in use today! Arnaud is currently the main representative for IBM at W3C, the chair of the W3C RDF Data Shapes Working Group, and a member of the Hyperledger Project Technical Steering Committee (TSC).

He has been involved in the architecture, design, and engineering of distributed systems for most of his 40+ year career in IT and has been actively engaged in open standards and open source development since 1999. He has overall technical responsibility for all of IBM’s strategic open technology initiatives, including Kubernetes, Cloud Foundry, Hyperledger, Open Container Initiative, Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Node.js, and more.

Dan joined Intel in 2000 to work on emerging web and distributed systems technologies. His early accomplishments include optimizations of matching engines for major stock exchanges and multi-tier system designs at a variety of financial institutions. Working with industry consortia in 2007, Dan led Intel’s contributions on a privacy preserving network leveraging proof of work and anonymous credentials. Since 2009, Dan has incubated new business ventures in Intel’s New Technology Group. Dan is excited to contribute the Sawtooth Lake Distributed Ledger project into Hyperledger and collaborate with the community to create something globally beneficial.

coming soon

He joined Fujitsu Laboratories of America in 2015. His current research interests are spread throughout general cryptography, with a current focus on cryptocurrency and applicable cryptographic techniques, lattice-based cryptography, and cryptographic primitives.

Mark proposed the Hyperledger Performance and Scale Working Group (PSWG) and has been the Chair of the PSWG since its inception. He has been involved with SPEC and the creation of several benchmarks. He has presented at several Linux Foundation events as well as the Red Hat Summit.

He holds a degree in Computer Science from Utah State University and a Master of Business Administration from Brigham Young University.  Nathan is the chair of Hyperledger Indy’s Agent working group, championing the company’s engagement in the open source community through Hyperledger Indy and is a contributor to distributed identity and blockchain standards at the Decentralized Identity Foundation and the W3C.  His development experience spans diverse systems including robotics, GIS, file systems, big data analytics, and attribute-based security systems.

Swetha Repakula is currently a software engineer at IBM’s Open Technologies. For the last two years, she has been working on Hyperledger Fabric, specifically on its EVM integration. Previously, she was a full time open source contributor for Cloud Foundry. Swetha holds a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley.

Tracy Kuhrt is a Technology Architect within Accenture’s Emerging and Growth business with 20+ years of experience covering the entire software development lifecycle. Tracy has been involved in the blockchain space since 2015. Prior to joining Accenture, Tracy was a Hyperledger Community Architect.

Troy guides SecureKey’s open platform development team and leads technical strategy for our DLT-backed identity and authentication efforts. He is an active contributor to the Hyperledger community by serving as a maintainer for Aries Framework Go and Fabric SDK Go. He strongly believes in leveraging distributed ledger technology and standards to solve business and trust problems. He holds a M.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Toronto.

Arien Malec has a more than 20 year career in healthcare and life sciences. In his current role as SVP, R&D Clinical and Administrative Networks for Change Healthcare, he addresses high scale information exchange and improved care, improved health, and cost containment through the use of clinical data. Prior to that role, he had an 18 month stint at the Office of the National Coordinator, as Coordinator for the Direct Project and the Standards and Interoperability Framework. Previously, he was VP, Product Management for RelayHealth, leading product strategy for RelayHealth’s Cloud Platform for HIE and patient engagement; and came to that role from a previous career applying clinical informatics to problems in pharmaceutical drug development and pharmacovigilance.

Member of:

Health IT Advisory Committee , Member

Trusted Exchange Framework Task Force , Co-Chair

Interoperability Standards Priorities Task Force , Member

Arnaud was a staff member of the W3C and the X Consortium and has represented IBM in several standards and open source organizations for many years. Arnaud has been involved in every aspect of the Open Technologies development process. This includes the technical, strategic, political, and legal aspects. Arnaud was editor of several key Web specifications including HTML and DOM and was involved in high profile open source projects such as Xerces, the Apache XML parser, and the X Window System. Arnaud made his first steps in Open Source in 1990 with the release of the XPM library which is still in use today! Arnaud is currently the main representative for IBM at W3C, the chair of the W3C RDF Data Shapes Working Group, and a member of the Hyperledger Project Technical Steering Committee (TSC).

He has experience leading global teams, using the latest technologies to create new products, solutions and systems. Prior to New Digital Business, he worked on BBVA’s Open Platform, Banks as a Service, Financial Digital Platforms, and Added Valued Mobile Services initiatives. Prior to BBVA, he worked as a consultant in mobile technologies for financial institutions and retail and developed multiplayer mobile games. Carlos is co-author of the book “Blockchain Industrial Evolution,” mentor of AI at Universidad Internacional La Rioja, has lectured at the International Desing Scholl.

Previously, Chris was the CTO of Platform Engineering group at Mirantis, a company that worked extensively with open source in the OpenStack community, managing their relationships with Intel and others. He has held leadership and engineering roles at Facebook, Dell DCS, AuthenTec, and LSI Logic.

He has over 18 years of experience in Financial Services split between consulting and industry roles. The early part of his career was primarily focused on retail banking, and cards and in the past decade he has focused on capital markets. Dave has experience and expertise in running strategy functions, innovation, strategic cost management, large-scale restructuring, customer relationship management, M&A, outsourcing & offshoring and process excellence.

He has 30 years of experience in software product strategy and cloud services. His recent activities were providing Fujitsu’s public cloud platform in 6 regions worldwide, led some startup companies acquisition and partner alliances. He is also leading some digital transformation projects at Fujitsu customers as well as Fujitsu internally by leveraging API management. Blockchain initiative is a part of his API ecosystem development.

Jonas holds a Diploma in Computer Science and Japanese Studies from University of Bonn. Within Daimler he previously was in lead architecture roles for Finance Systems and various leadership positions. He has a keen interest in new technologies and the Open Source movement.

ConsenSys is one of the largest and fastest-growing companies in the blockchain technology space, building developer tools, decentralized applications, and solutions for enterprises and governments that harness the power of Ethereum. Headquartered in New York, ConsenSys also has a global presence, employing top entrepreneurs, computer scientists, software developers, and experts in enterprise delivery worldwide.

Lubin graduated from Princeton University with a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He worked in the Princeton Robotics Lab, at tomandandy music developing an autonomous music composition tool, and at private research firm Vision Applications Inc. building autonomous mobile robots.

As a software engineer and consultant, Lubin worked with eMagine on the Identrus project and was involved in the founding and operation of a hedge fund with a partner. He held positions as Director of the New York office of Blacksmith Software Consulting, and VP of Technology in Private Wealth Management at Goldman Sachs. Through these posts, Lubin focused on the intersection of cryptography, engineering, and finance.

Switching gears, Lubin moved to Kingston, Jamaica to work on projects in the music industry. Two years into his musical endeavors, Lubin co-founded the Ethereum Project and has been working on Ethereum and ConsenSys since January 2014.”

His team is responsible for all technology legal support needs of the company, including with respect to software, cybersecurity, open source, innovation, outsourcing, procurement and telecommunications matters. His team is also responsible for supporting the company’s websites, mobile apps and social media presences. Kevin sits on the Chief Information Officer’s leadership team, and is also a member of the Digital Leadership Committee of the General Counsel’s Organization. In his role, Kevin supports a variety of strategic initiatives across the company.

Kevin joined American Express in February 2007 as Counsel in the Technology Law Group. He was named to his current position of Chief Technology Counsel in December 2010.

Prior to joining American Express, Kevin practiced law in the Intellectual Property Transactions Group at Kirkland & Ellis in New York. Before that he practiced in the Technology Transactions Group at Cooley Godward in Silicon Valley, where he helped to launch the original Creative Commons licenses. He earned his BA at Yale University and his JD at Columbia University.

Makot Shirai has 30 years of experience in solution and service development especially for retail industry. He has provided store systems which is dedicated to increase customer experience and operational excellence including Omni-channel function for big retailers. He has worked not only in Japan but also in Asia Pacific and US. He lived in Texas from 2012 to 2014 to deliver retail platform and worked as senior solution manager.

Now he is working for all enterprise market: manufacture, finance, trade, transport, and retail industry.

His team is responsible for creating innovative services with new technologies which include Cloud, AI, IoT, Biometrics, 5G Network, Blockchain etc.  Also he is responsible for Software Engineering, Cybersecurity, and Managed Service.

Mark proposed the Hyperledger Performance and Scale Working Group (PSWG) and has been the Chair of the PSWG since its inception. He has been involved with SPEC and the creation of several benchmarks. He has presented at several Linux Foundation events as well as the Red Hat Summit.

Mike and his team work with blockchain software developers and industry leaders to help them utilize silicon technologies like Intel® SGX that can help improve blockchain security, privacy, and scalability. Mike has worked for over 25 years on new computing technologies ranging from consumer electronics devices to cloud software initiatives.

Paul Maley is the Chief of Staff for Deutsche Bank’s Institutional Client Group and also the Head of Change for the firm’s Corporate & Investment Bank. Paul is responsible for the operational management of the institutional client business at DB but also anticipating, analysing and implementing the market structure and regulatory changes that impact the capital markets and corporate banking franchise at the firm. Previously Paul was the Global Head of the Business Solutions Group (BSG) and led the Listed Derivatives business for the Americas within Deutsche Bank’s Prime Finance business. Paul has more than two decades of capital markets experience shared between the US and Europe. He holds a degree in Electrical & Mechanical Engineering from Brunel University, London.

Palatnick previously served as a Domain Lead in the Application Development division of IT and was Chief Administrative Officer of Information Technology from 2003 to 2007. Palatnick joined Government Securities Clearing Corporation (GSCC), a DTCC subsidiary, in 1993 as Vice President, Information Technology. He became Managing Director and Chief Information Officer of DTCC subsidiaries GSCC (1996), Mortgage-Backed Securities Clearing Corporation (2000) and Fixed Income Clearing Corporation (2003). Prior to that, Palatnick was Vice President, Development and Systems, at Security Pacific Corporation Sequor Software Services. Palatnick received his BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Buffalo, and is an alumnus of the David Rockefeller fellowship.

One of the first people to lead IBM’s then-embryonic blockchain project, Sharon Cocco is the IBM Development Director leading IBM’s contributions to Hyperledger technologies and IBM Blockchain Platform (IBP) offerings. In this role, Sharon has seen blockchain grow from a phenomenon spun out of Bitcoin to a distributed ledger  reality that works for business, helping lead partnerships with large consortium blockchain initiatives including IBM Food Trust, Tradelens, We.trade, CLS, and SecureKey, while also partnering with startups and other IBM clients.

Sharon has an extensive record of success in managing open source, software, and hardware development programs, including special expertise in bringing new products to market. She has also excelled at software transformation, digital transformation, mobile applications, and restructuring initiatives, and has a strong background in Software as a Service (SaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS),.

Sharon has held key executive positions across IBM in several divisions including the Cloud division and Industry Platforms. She has also been transformative in leading innovation efforts in several portfolios such as the WebSphere Application Server portfolio.

Sharon has  contributed to numerous community efforts including volunteering for the Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts of America, the public school system, and several other community service efforts in conjunction with her church. Sharon has encouraged and sponsored STEM at various educational facilities and has been featured at speaking engagements  about opportunities for women in science and technology.

Thierry globally leads virtual and verification & validation activities in Airbus research portfolio i.e. all processes, methods & tools; modelling & simulation of aircrafts, manufacturing or operations, digital continuity; ground & flight test means; flight test demonstrators.

Torsten is heading the SAP Innovation Center Network, a group of development teams turning emerging technologies into real opportunities for enterprises. Prior to his current position, Torsten was driving SAP’s initiatives around distributed ledger technology by evangelizing, developing the technological foundations, and implementing end-to-end business solutions leveraging blockchain capabilities. He previously held several positions in product and innovation strategy, product management, software architecture, and business application development. Torsten has an MBA from the Graduate School Rhein-Neckar and a bachelor’s degree in IT from the Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University.

He has a career as systems engineer, business consultant for financial industry as well as a banker. Before joining Hitachi, Toshiya was responsible for Internet Banking and CRM at Citibank N.A.(Japan) and has been involved in a wide range of business and technologies related to marketing, channel strategies, biometrics, and artificial intelligence. Toshiya is a frequent speaker at industrial events and academia. He co-authored “E-Commerce Banking Strategies” (2000), Toyo Keizai, Inc. Toshiya holds a BA in economics from Waseda University and MBA in marketing and international business from New York University.

He is responsible for financial oversight and business management across Technology, Operations, KYC and Controls. He also manages the Blockchain initiative for the Corporate and Investment Bank. Prior to this position, Umar was the Head of Small Business Segment for Chase Consumer Bank. His key responsibilities included P&L management, service delivery, marketing and AML/KYC controls. Previously he held the positions of National Sales Manager and CFO for Chase Business Banking. Umar joined JP Morgan Chase in 2009. Prior to joining JP Morgan Chase, he was the Chief Sales Officer for CIT where he led revenue growth across middle market and specialty lending businesses. He started his career at McKinsey & Company. Umar got his B.S. in Computer Science, B.S. in Economics and M.Engg. in Computer Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Umar received his JD from Yale Law School. He is a member of the New York Bar.

Wei Xiao graduated from Zhejiang University and  joined Baidu in 2007. Currently served as Chief Software Architect. He has been engaged in research and development of Baidu community products, cloud computing, mobile cloud ecological products, financial big data and blockchain, and holds many patents in these related technical fields. He is now undertaking management of XuperChain. Mr. Xiao has also participated in several National Science and Technology Major Projects.