Vijay Ganesh

Vijay Ganesh
University of Waterloo

Bio: Dr. Vijay Ganesh is an associate professor at the University of Waterloo. Prior to joining Waterloo in 2012, he was a research scientist at MIT (2007-2012) and completed his PhD in computer science from Stanford University in 2007. Vijay's primary area of research is the theory and practice of automated mathematical reasoning algorithms aimed at software engineering, formal methods, security, and mathematics. In this context he has led the development of many SAT/SMT solvers, most notably, STP, Z3 string, MapleSAT, and MathCheck. He has also proved several decidability and complexity results in the context of first-order theories. He has won over 25 awards, honors, and medals to-date for his research, including an ACM Test of Time Award at CCS 2016, an Ontario Early Researcher Award 2016, two Google Faculty Research Awards in 2011 and 2013, and a Ten-Year Most Influential Paper citation at DATE 2008.

Florian Kerschbaum

Florian Kerschbaum
University of Waterloo

Bio: Dr. Florian Kerschbaum is an associate professor in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo (since 2017) and executive director of the Waterloo Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute (since 2018). He has also worked as chief research expert at SAP in Karlsruhe (2005 – 2016) and as a software architect at Arxan Technologies in San Francisco (2002 – 2004). He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (2010) and a master's degree from Purdue University (2001). He is interested in data security and privacy in data management, machine learning, and blockchains. He extends real-world systems with cryptographic security mechanisms to achieve provable security guarantees. His work has been applied to products for databases, supply chain management and RFID tracking.

Richard Ma

Richard Ma
Quantstamp Inc

Bio: Richard Ma is CEO and Director of Quantstamp; he manages product strategy, business development, engineering strategy, and hiring, with a goal of long-term sustainable success for the blockchain community. He was a former software engineer at Tower Research where he developed software that handled millions of dollars using extreme testing methods. He was inspired to found Quantstamp after investing in the DAO and experiencing the aftermath firsthand. Richard aims to secure the future of blockchain technology through the Quantstamp protocol. Quantstamp is a Y-Combinator backed company that can help investors verify smart contract code for projects, help developers check their source code thoroughly for vulnerabilities, and help everyone deal with the exponential growth in blockchain projects from a security perspective.