Samantha Stein
Chief Strategy Officer at QEDIT & Artist at Wombkind
Samantha is a polymath who wields her pen, paintbrush, computer code, and nonlinear mind across different mediums to build a safe, sovereign, and sacred world.
Samantha stays awake at night thinking about how data is one of the most harmful or helpful resources on the planet depending on how we wield it. As the Chief Strategy Officer at QEDIT, she focuses on the use of advance cryptographic methods to reduce data burdens, verify information with certainty, and ensure that our data keeps us safe, sovereign, and enlightened. Samantha is a seasoned entrepreneur, business advisor and media expert. Prior to joining QEDIT, she was named a Curator, Global Shaper, and Media Leader for the World Economic Forum, and served as the Director of Special Projects at TechCrunch.
Samantha dedicates her time advising startups primarily to underrepresented entrepreneurs. Inclusivity starts at the point of vision, access, and design. She was named a WEF Media Leader and is also a contributor to Forbes.
Her award-winning art, shown recently during Art Basel Miami 2019, and the WEF Annual Meeting 2020 in Davos, focuses on the intersection of technology and consciousness. It is a commentary on the Darwinian nature of mindfulness in a world where technology is designed to manipulate our subconscious mind and daily behaviors. The use of gradient color grounds the observer in their somatic experience, reconnecting the mind and body. Grit Daily recently named her, “Emerging Artist of the Year.”
Prof. Chris Peikert
Associate Professor, University of Michigan
Chris Peikert (Associate Professor, University of Michigan) is a cryptographer who specializes in lattice-based and post-quantum cryptography, fully homomorphic encryption, zero knowledge, and computational complexity. His works include several pioneering lattice-based cryptosystems, including digital signatures, identity-based encryption, and (recently) noninteractive zero knowledge for general statements. He is the recipient of a Sloan Foundation Fellowship, an NSF CAREER Award, the Theory of Cryptography Conference Test of Time Award, and best/distinguished paper awards at STOC, CRYPTO, EUROCRYPT, and TCC.
Antonio Senatore
Global Blockchain CTO & Lead of the EMEA Blockchain Lab, Deloitte
Antonio is the Global Blockchain CTO & Lead of the EMEA Blockchain Lab. Antonio leads in technology research, technology roadmap, lab technical architecture and infrastructure definition, as well as the Lab technical operating model.
Antonio has over 15 years of professional experience in the IT industry, ranging from Software Development, Technical Architecture, Enterprise Architecture, Data Architecture, Big data Architecture and Strategy, Data Warehousing and Advanced Analytics, Blockchain and Cryptography.
Prof. Vinod Vaikuntanathan
Associate Professor, MIT & Chief Cryptographer, Duality Technologies
Professor Vinod Vaikuntanathan is an associate professor of computer science at MIT and the chief cryptographer at Duality Technologies. Vinod is the co-inventor of most modern fully homomorphic encryption systems and many other lattice-based (post-quantum secure) cryptographic primitives. His work has been recognized with a George M. Sprowls PhD thesis award (2009), an IBM Josef Raviv Fellowship (2008), a Sloan Faculty Fellowship (2013), a Microsoft Faculty Fellowship (2014), an NSF CAREER Award (2014), a DARPA Young Faculty Award (2018), and a Harold E. Edgerton Faculty Award (2018). He holds SM and PhD degrees from MIT and a BTech degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras.
Mariana Gomez de la Villa
Distributed Ledger Technology Program Director, ING
Mariana Gomez de la Villa has joined ING in 2015 and is currently the Distributed Ledger
Technology Program Director at ING, with overall responsibility for driving research,
development and implementation of Distributed Ledger Technology as well as
capitalizing on its potential in order to unlock mass-scale value.
Under Mariana’s leadership, the Blockchain program has delivered over 44 proofs of
concept and 8 live pilots in collaboration with the following business areas: payments,
trade finance and working capital solutions, financial markets, post-trade, bank treasury,
lending, compliance and identity.
Mariana is also responsible for setting up long-term purpose and vision, including the
governance of the program within ING globally. Mariana is an active leader in global
consortia, outlining the Distributed Ledger Technology strategy and envisioning market
landscapes.
Mariana’s accountabilities include the definition of products, services and business
models, as well as foresight to business, technology, leadership communities and
international stakeholders, including regulators.
Dr. Kristin Lauter
Principal Researcher and Partner Research Manager, Microsoft Research
Kristin Lauter is a mathematician and cryptographer whose research areas are number
theory, algebraic geometry, and applications to cryptography. She is particularly known for her work on
homomorphic encryption, elliptic curve cryptography, and for introducing supersingular isogeny graphs
as a hard problem into cryptography. She is a Principal Researcher and Partner Research Manager of the
Cryptography and Privacy Group at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington. She served as
President of the Association for Women in Mathematics from 2015 –2017. She has published more than
100 papers and holds more than 50 patents.
Jonathan Rouach
Executive Director, ZKProof.org
CEO and co-Founder, QEDIT
Jonathan S. Rouach is the co-founder and CEO of QEDIT, helping enterprises leverage their data using Privacy Enhancing Techniques such as Zero-Knowledge Proofs. Before that, he co-founded a blockchain security company (sold to Digital Asset Holding), co-founded the Israeli Bitcoin Association , and co-founded Bits of Gold LTD, the leading Bitcoin exchange in Israel. Jonathan is an Electrical-Engineer from the Technion, served as an analyst in the Israeli Intelligence.
Dr. Joshua Baron
Program Manager, Information Innovation Office, DARPA
Dr. Joshua Baron joined DARPA’s Information Innovation Office (I2O) as a program manager in August 2017. His research interests include cryptography, privacy, and anonymity. Baron runs the SIEVE, RACE and Brandeis programs as well as the Cooperative Secure Learning (CSL) AI Exploration (AIE) program. He also ran a DARPA workshop entitled Applications and Barriers to Consensus protocols (ABC) that examined permissionless distributed consensus protocols.
Prior to his position at DARPA, Baron was at RAND Corporation, where he conducted policy analysis for the Department of Defense, mostly the U.S. Air Force and Joint Staff. Baron’s research investigated methods and tools to enable the development of enhanced decision-making capabilities for cyberspace operations. He also examined policy implications of virtual currencies as well as various cryptographic technologies. Before joining RAND, Baron worked for HRL Laboratories, conducting research on secure multiparty computation.
Baron holds Doctorate of Philosophy and Master of Arts degrees in mathematics from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley. Baron’s doctoral work focused on secure multiparty computation.
