Daniel Aronoff is a PhD candidate in economics at MIT. He is the author of The Financial Crisis Reconsidered and A Theory of Accumulation and Secular Stagnation, both published by Palgrave-Macmillan/Springer, and he has been a frequent contributor to the Financial Times newspaper. Daniel is currently engaged in two research projects related to digital currencies. One is an evaluation of the incentives for double-spend attacks on Proof of Work crypto- currencies The other is an evaluation of the effects of placing government debt on a distributed ledger in the context of an applied general equilibrium model.​

Luis Barros is a Lecturer in the Global Economics Management Group at MIT Sloan.

He is a managing partner of Leading Business Ventures (LBV), an investment entity and consultancy, and director &audit committee member of the ECOWAS Investment and Development Bank (BIDC) in Africa.

As a practitioner and scholar, his activities focus on working with organizational leaders in strategically utilizing financing instruments, venture education pedagogy, data-driven market insights and innovation “interventions” to enable commercialization, economic impact, digital transformation, ecosystem effectiveness, and value creation.

Barros is an investor, entrepreneur and consultant with over 27 years of experience in science and technology sectors.

As a consultant, Barros concurrently served as a venture partner of Portugal Ventures and CoDirector of Innovation and Industry at MIT Portugal Program. In addition, LBV’s application of multi-disciplinary methodologies and speaking engagements have spanned 34 countries and five continents. This includes or has included serving as senior advisor to multinational corporations, such as Cardinal Health and a Japanese biopharma’s oncology division, and a corporate development partnering series featuring MedTech conglomerates. LBV was contracted to provide guidance to numerous startups and scale-ups via various roles with mentor-based Accelerators and SBIR-funded companies of the NIH, DOD, NSF, and Draper Laboratories.

Prior to LBV, Barros was on the founding teams which architected and implemented venture funds, such as Massachusetts $1B Life Sciences Center, Lilly Ventures, and IC Sciences (formed by the cofounders of Boston Scientific); and served on the compliance staff at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

As a serial-entrepreneur, Barros held leadership roles in early stage venture-backed entities, including an AI-driven interactive bioinformatics company and an application virtualization platform, both respectively acquired by publicly-traded companies. He began his career via successive sales and marketing roles in surgical and clinical pharmacology in blue chip companies.

Barros has degrees from MIT-Sloan (MBA), University of Pennsylvania (MS.Ed), UMASS Amherst-Isenberg (BBA), and is a graduate of Harvard’s Executive Program on Board Governance.

Quanquan is currently a research intern at the MIT Digital Currency Initiative for Summer 2019. She is currently a Ph.D. student in the MIT Theory of Computation group, advised by Erik D. Demaine. Her research interests include graph algorithms (both in the sequential and parallel/distributed sense), consensus for blockchains, proofs of space/work, and local models of computation. She seeks to apply local techniques to a variety of theoretical and practical problems. 

Quanquan received her B. S. in Computer Science and Mathematics and her Master of Engineering in Computer Science also from MIT. To see her full list of publications, please see: http://web.mit.edu/quanquan/www/.

Patrick is a lawyer and expert on bitcoin and blockchain-based technologies. He will conduct research into the law and policy implications of bitcoin, distributed ledgers and smart contracts. Previously Patrick was a co-founder of the Bitcoin Foundation where he served at times as General Counsel and Executive Director. Patrick has engaged regulators and policymakers in the US and Europe on bitcoin and the emerging digital economy. He was named among America’s 50 Outstanding General Counsel for 2014 by the National Law Journal. Patrick also serves as President Board member for the BitGive Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on charitable giving and social impact using bitcoin.

Martin is an Innovator-in-Residence at the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale, where he leads the development of the Yale Open Innovation Lab. He is a direct collaborator and research affiliate to the Digital Currency Initiative, where he leads the project on Open Solar Financing for Puerto Rico. Martin did his PhD at the Australian-German Climate & Energy College in the University of Melbourne, Australia and holds an undergraduate degree from The University of Southern California where he focused on Geo and Astrobiology. Thinking holistically about big picture sustainability and translating this into innovative entrepreneurial action is by far what he enjoys the most!

J. Philipp Schmidt is Director of Learning Innovation at the MIT Media Lab, where he leads the ML Learning initiative, teaches courses, and conducts research on learning communities. He is also a cofounder and board member of Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU), a non-profit organization that provides access to online higher education through public libraries. Philipp served on the founding board of the OpenCourseWare Consortium, co-authored the Cape Town Open Education Declaration, and is an advisor to a number of non-profit and for-profit education projects. He has received Shuttleworth and Ashoka fellowships, and came to MIT as a Media Lab Director's fellow.

Daniel Moroz is a CS Phd Student at Harvard University who is currently working on the Double-spend Counter attack paper with Neha Narula and Daniel Aronoff

Varunram Ganesh performs research on discoveries in cryptocurrencies, distributed systems and privacy. Varunram's experience spans multiple startups, research organizations and open source projects with a focus on security testing and bug triaging. Varunram is also part of Yale's Open Innovation Lab at the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking where he looks at how cutting edge crypto can be applied to energy and climate change. In his spare time, Varunram likes to read on history, watch movies and talk to people about new ideas.

Silvio Micali is the Ford Professor of Engineering at MIT and winner of the prestigious 2012 Turing Award for his pioneering work in cryptography. His scientific interests include complexity-based pseudorandom generation and cryptography, interactive and computationally sound proofs, zero knowledge, secure protocols, and mechanism design.

Ethan Zuckerman is director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, and an Associate Professor of the Practice at the MIT Media Lab. His research focuses on the use of media as a tool for social change, the role of technology in international development, and the use of new media technologies by activists. He is the author of Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection (W. W. Norton, 2013).

With Rebecca MacKinnon, Zuckerman co-founded the international blogging community Global Voices. It showcases news and opinions from citizen media in more than 150 nations and 30 languages, publishing editions in 20 languages. Through Global Voices and through the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, where he served as a researcher and fellow for eight years, Zuckerman is active in efforts to promote freedom of expression and fight censorship in online spaces.

In 2000, Zuckerman founded Geekcorps, a technology volunteer organization that sends IT specialists to work on projects in developing nations, with a focus on West Africa. Previously, he helped found Tripod.com, one of the web's first "personal publishing" sites. Zuckerman blogs at ethanzuckerman.com/blog. He received his bachelor's degree from Williams College, and as a Fulbright scholar, studied at the University of Ghana at Legon.

Ariel is a PhD student and research assistant in the Responsive Environments group at the Media Lab, where she designs and prototypes aerospace structures with embedded sensor networks. As Founder and Lead of the Media Lab's Space Exploration Initiative, she coordinates space research opportunities across the spectrum of science, engineering, art and design and support collaborations on this work throughout MIT. Previously, in the Viral Communications group at the Media Lab, she produced research and prototypes for blockchain-based medical records.

Alin Tomescu is a PhD candidate in MIT CSAIL, advised by Professor Srinivas Devadas. His current research interests are in secure communication, public-key directories, cryptographic puzzles, cryptocurrencies, anonymity and privacy-preserving web applications.

Prema Shrikrishna is a blockchain enthusiast, a sustainable business champion and has spent over 13 years building sustainable business operations for Walt Disney, ABB & Vodafone across Asia Pacific. She is passionate about understanding industry dynamics enabled by technology and their impact on the global ecosystem—economic, social, and environmental.Currently, she is a serving as Blockchain & Supply chains advisor at the MIT Media Lab. She has advised Governments, Ports & Fortune 500 companies on streamlining process efficiencies through the Distributed Ledger Technology. She is also collaborating with the Belt and Road Blockchain consortium, Hong Kong to explore the future of digital trade for Belt and Road initiative led by China encompassing over 60 countries.

Irene Hernandez worked on the Solar Microgrids project based in Puerto Rico, which is currently run by Martin Wainstein.