Bio: Dirk is leading the IoT Networking Research at Huawei German Research Center. He is co-chairing two Research Groups in the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) on Information-Centric Networking (ICNRG) and on Decentralized Internet Infrastructure (Proposed DINRG). Dirk has published several IETF RFCs, books, and research publications on Internet technologies. He has a PhD from Universität Bremen. Previously Dirk was the Chief Researcher for Networking at NEC Laboratories Europe and worked as a Visiting Researcher at KDDI R&D Laboratories in Japan.

Bio: Prof. Bryan Ford leads the Decentralized/Distributed Systems (DEDIS) research group at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). Ford focuses broadly on building secure decentralized systems, touching on topics including private and anonymous communication, scalable decentralized systems, blockchain technology, Internet architecture, and operating systems. Ford earned his B.S. at the University of Utah and his Ph.D. at MIT, then joined the faculty of Yale University where his work received the Jay Lepreau Best Paper Award and grants from NSF, DARPA, and ONR, including the NSF CAREER award. His continuing work receives support from EPFL, the AXA Research Fund, and numerous industry partners. He has served as a member of the DARPA Information Science and Technology (ISAT) study group, and is an advisory board member of the Swiss FinTech Innovations association.