Meet Our Team
Xinshu Dong
CEO SEE MORE
PhD, National University of Singapore Xinshu is a scientist and practitioner in building secure systems, ranging from blockchains to web browsers and applications. He was a technical lead for several national cybersecurity projects. The outcome of his research has been published at top international conferences. More recently, he led the research and development of Anquan’s proprietary scalable and secure blockchain, deployed for financial and ecommerce applications. He is currently leading the Zilliqa team for developing a new public blockchain Zilliqa for high-throughput applications. Juzar Motiwalla
Chief Strategist See more
PhD, University of Wisconsin - Madison Juzar Motiwalla has investment and board-level experience with global technology startups. He was a venture capitalist responsible for investments in Asia and Silicon Valley. M&A exits with leading US and Japanese companies were secured for companies he was involved with. Prior to his venture capital journey he was the CEO of a 350-person computer science research lab in Singapore. Antonio Nicolas Nunez
Core Developer See More
Bachelor Degrees in Physics and Computer Engineering, Ateneo de Manila University Antonio has bachelor degrees in Physics and Computer Engineering from Ateneo de Manila University, as well as a diploma in R&D Management from University of the Philippines Open University. He has over 10 years experience as a software engineer, deploying industry-grade solutions for multiple sectors. His programming interests include efficient C++ coding as well as build and test automation. |
Prateek Saxena
Chief Scientific Advisor SEE MORE
PhD, University of California, Berkeley Prateek Saxena is a research professor in computer science at National University of Singapore, and has a PhD in Computer Science from UC Berkeley. He works on blockchains and computer security. His research has influenced the design of browser platforms, web standards and app stores widely used today. He has received several premier awards such as the Top 10 Innovators under 35 (MIT TR35 Asia) in 2017. Max Kantelia
Chief Evangelist See More
BSc (Hons) Engineering Science Max is a financial services entrepreneur with 25 years’ experience of building professional services and technology firms in Europe, the US and Asia. He is a Co-Founder of Anquan Capital in Singapore and is on the board of Aeriandi (Oxford) and untapt (New York), both fast growth deep technology company in the areas of voice technology and aritifcal intelligence. Max is an engineering graduate and started his career at GEC Marconi designing airborne radar systems. He was selected by EY as one of Asia’s Top 100 FinTech contributors in 2016 and is a part of the London Mayor’s Internationalisation programme. Jun Hao Tan
Core Developer See more
Bachelor of Computer Science (Honours), National University of Singapore Jun Hao is a practitioner in various areas in the Computer Science domain including blockchain, web security, trusted computing and program analysis. He was also awarded the National Infocomm Scholarship and graduated from the National University of Singapore (NUS) with a bachelor degree in computing science with specialisation in information security. At NUS, he co-founded NUS Greyhats, a cybersecurity interest group, which has won numerous cybersecurity events. He also co-founded Edgis, a non-profit special interest group provides a platform where infosec enthusiasts can meet, exchange ideas with others and contribute to community. |
Yaoqi Jia
Head of Technology SEE MORE
PhD, National University of Singapore Yaoqi is the Head of Technology for Zilliqa. His prior experience focuses on building secure and privacy-preserving web and distributed systems with cryptographic mechanisms. He proposed several technologies in his research as the building blocks for next-generation blockchain, addressing consensus and privacy issues. His research work has been published in top international conferences, such as CCS, USENIX Security, PETS, RAID, ESORICS. He has received the Best Paper Award in W2SP (2014) and ICECCS (2014). His work was acknowledged by Google and Apple (CVE-2014-7948 for Chrome and CVE-2015-5907 for Safari) and has received media coverage including Dailydot, Gizmodo and Techspot. Saiba Kataruka
Marketing Lead see more
MBA, University of Oxford Saiba Kataruka has earlier worked with IBM as a consultant for five years, in the payment technology field, in Asia and Europe. He then left the company to pursue an MBA degree from the University of Oxford. He loves reading, writing, public speaking and traveling. He is most interested in the decentralization aspect of the Blockchain technology and in the ways that it can improve the current social and financial structures. Clark Yang
Core Developer SEE MORE
Master of Computer Science, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan Clark has over 10 years of experience in software development, with a focus on cryptographic engineering and multi-threaded embedded systems. During his former role at MediaTek (a semiconductor company), he has built solutions for large-scale commercial software in cooperation with Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. Clark also has experience in Digital Rights Management (DRM) development on Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), with focus on ARMv7/ARMv8 OP-TEE platforms. He successfully enhanced the performance of cryptographic primitives (by X10) in video streaming via HLS/RTP/RTSP, adopting symmetric/asymmetric cryptographic algorithms using OpenSSL 1.0.2g and Public Key Accelerators on DRM software. He also developed the first Internet of Things (IoT) software (common interface on PCMCIA) in the world, which has been widely-adopted in 30,000,000+ televisions across 100+ countries. During the last couple of years, Clark acquired experience in Agile software development, test-driven development (TDD), continuous integration (CI), software-automation, and test-strategy development, with leading a team of 8 software engineers in developing 7 full stack auto-test software on various platforms. Prior to joining the industry, Clark graduated from National Chiao Tung University with a bachelor and master’s degree in Computer Science. |
Amrit Kumar
Head of Research See More
PhD, Université Grenoble-Alpes (France) Amrit is a Research Fellow (aka a post-doctoral researcher) at the National University of Singapore. He holds a PhD from Université Grenoble-Alpes, France and was hosted at Inria's Grenoble center. Prior to his PhD, he obtained an Engineer's diploma from Ecole Polytechnique, France, where he studied Computer Science and Mathematics. His research interests broadly span security, privacy and applied cryptography. Addison Huegel
Head of Communications SEE MORE
BA in Physics, University of California, Berkeley Addison Huegel is a new technology communications and marketing specialist with extensive experience building communities around blockchain, B2B, and B2C applications. Over the years he’s worked with hundreds of companies, from startups to Fortune 500s. In 2015, he served as a communications consultant to the Ethereum Foundation and DEVCON1. Before entering into marketing and PR, Addison worked in the field of Condensed Matter Physics and has published a number of scientific, peer-reviewed papers. Siddhartha Sahai
Developer See More
M.Sc(Tech), Information Systems, BITS Pilani Siddhartha has been a Topcoder member since 2014, winning various software development challenges, and has contributed to Google Summer of Code as well. He has a keen interest in blockchain technology and modern web development. He also loves music and playing the guitar. |
Ong En Hui
Head of Business Development SEE MOR
Bachelors of Arts, Waseda University. CAIA. En Hui heads up business development at Zilliqa. She has extensive sales and distribution experience in financial services. Her prior roles include sales and distribution of ETFs and investment funds at BlackRock where she worked with asset managers and banks in the Southeast Asian market, and subsequently at JPMorgan Asset Management working with pension funds, insurance companies and banks in the region. En Hui speaks fluent Chinese and Japanese and is a sake enthusiast. Haichuan Liu
Core Developer See more
Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering (Honours), Nayang Technological University Haichuan is a winner of Singapore Enterprise Scholarship and an AWS Certified Solution Architect, and currently finishing his master degree in Computer Control & Automation from Nanyang Technological University. In his last position, he was involved in an autonomous vehicle project, and in charged of the development of Mobility on Demand system from A to Z using C++, also led the grounding of DevOps. He is addicted to the realization of large distributed system, especially Blockchain. Besides, he has great interest in indie game development and AI technologies. Kaustubh Shamshery
Developer See More
B.Tech (Information Technology, IIIT Allahabad Kaustubh is a software developer working in area of computational intelligence and network security. He has priorly been involved in reviewing blockchain companies and also has been a part of international blockchain projects. His research interests include NLP, deep learning and blockchain scalability. |
Meet Our Advisors
Evan Cheng
Advisor See more
M.S in Computer Science, Syracuse University Evan is an engineering director at Facebook, where he oversees development of programming languages, runtimes, and compilers. He received the 2012 ACM Software System Award for his work on LLVM at Apple. |
Aquinas Hobor
Advisor SEE MORE
Phd Computer Science, Princeton University Aquinas Hobor was born near Chicago, IL. He got his undergraduate degrees from the University of Chicago and his PhD in computer science from Princeton University in 2008. He does research in computer theory, including semantics, verification, machine-checked proof, logic, complexity, and algorithms. From 2008-2011 he was a Lee Kuan Yew Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Computing, National University of Singapore. Since 2013 he has been an assistant professor with a joint appointment between Yale-NUS College and the School of Computing. |
Alexander Lipton
Advisor SEE MORE
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Mathematics Alexander Lipton is Founder and CEO of StrongHold Labs, Partner at Numeraire Financial, Co-Founder and Advisor of Distilled Analytics, Connection Science Fellow at MIT Media Lab and Visiting Professor of Financial Engineering at EPFL. He is an Advisory Board Member at UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies, Clearmatics and Numerix. His prior experience includes Managing Director at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, leading the quant group. Earlier, he also worked for Citadel Investment Group in Chicago, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and Bankers Trust. While working full time as a banker, Alex held several prestigious academic appointments, including Oxford-Man Institute, Imperial College London and the University of Illinois. Before switching to finance, Alex was a Full Professor of Mathematics at the University of Illinois and a Consultant at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees in pure mathematics from Moscow State University. In 2000 Alex was awarded the first Quant of the Year Award by Risk Magazine. Alex is the author of two books and a hundred papers on hydrodynamics, magnetohydrodynamics, astrophysics, chemical physics, and financial engineering. |
Loi Luu
Advisor see more
PhD, National University of Singapore Loi is a researcher working on cryptocurrencies, smart contract security and distributed consensus algorithms. He is also a regular invited speaker at Bitcoin and Ethereum workshops such as DevCon2, EDCON. Loi believes in the force of the Ethereum and Blockchain technologies and much of his work revolves around this community. He developed Oyente, the first open-source security analyzer for Ethereum smart contracts. Loi also cofounded SmartPool, another open source project which embraces decentralization of mining pools in existing cryptocurrency. He continues to champion decentralisation and trustless properties of the Blockchain with KyberNetwork, taking inspiration and developing value for the community. |
Nicolai Oster
Advisor See more
Nicolai Oster is the Head of ICO, leading the ICO Department at Bitcoin Suisse, and Advisor for several ICOs. Bitcoin Suisse, established in 2013, is a world leading regulated crypto financial company, based in Crypto Valley, Zug, Switzerland. Bitcoin Suisse has successfully assisted, facilitated and executed many ICOs, such as Melonport, OmiseGO, Streamr and many more - dating all the way back to the ICO of the Ethereum Foundation. |
Stuart Prior
Advisor SEE MORE
Stuart Prior is a Fintech veteran with 20+ in Corporate and Investment Banking. Stuart specializes in leading corporate banking initiatives for the adoption of blockchain technology and Crypto Finance. Throughout his career he has focused on the development of banking technology applications including Ultra High Frequency / Low Latency trading and the development of large scale data management platforms. Over the years he has worked with many of the largest banks in the world, including Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank, and will bring his expertise to help guide Zilliqa’s development and practical applications. |
Christel Quek
Advisor see more
BSc (Social Sciences), National University of Singapore Christel is a technology executive who has built brands and digital businesses since the advent of the digital economy. She is a Co-Founder of BOLT, a live TV & gaming service (Kenya, Southeast Asia, and Latin America), and the Founder of pin8cle, a strategic consultancy to turn start-ups to rev-ups. Previously, Christel founded Brandwatch's first office in Asia-Pacific (digital intelligence product), was the Head of Content at Twitter across their International Markets, and led Social Business for Samsung Asia. Christel was selected by The Guardian as one of the top global digital strategists, Campaign Asia-Pacific as a Woman to Watch, and Business Insider as one of the 30 best executives to follow on Twitter. More recently, Christel delivered the commencement speech at the National University of Singapore, and has contributed articles to Harvard Business Review and Huffington Post. |
Ilya Sergey
Advisor SEE MORE
PhD, KU Leuven (Beigium) Dr Ilya Sergey does research in the area of programming languages, program analysis, and formal verification. Prior to joining academia, Ilya has spent a part of his career in industry, working in JetBrains Inc., a world-leading company in creating integrated development environments for software developers. His joint research efforts with the members of Zilliqa team have already resulted in the inception of Scilla, a programming language for mechanically verified smart contracts. |
Vincent Zhou
Advisor SEE MORE
Vincent is founding partner of FBG Capital, with extensive experience in digital assets trading and investment. Vincent is also an early investor of a broad spectrum of blockchain companies and projects. He is considered as one of the most well-connected and visionary crypto hedge fund managers in Asia. |