Keynote Speakers & Lead Panelists

2026 Keynote Speakers

We are delighted to announce our confirmed keynotes and lead panelists. Additional speakers will be announced in the coming weeks.

Dr. Ram D. Gopal is a distinguished academic and leader in information systems and financial technology. He serves as Professor of Information Systems Management at Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, where he is also the Director of the Gillmore Centre for Financial Technology. In this role, he spearheads research and initiatives exploring emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and decentralized finance (DeFi), fostering collaborations between academia and industry to advance innovative financial solutions. He leads the FutureFinance.AI research program, which focuses on integrating AI and financial technologies to revolutionize PropTech, including partnerships such as the transatlantic PropTech research engine with the University of Delaware. Dr. Gopal teaches courses on Generative AI, Digital Finance, Blockchain, and Cryptocurrencies within Warwick's MSc programs, and contributes to discussions on DeFi decentralization and the role of stablecoins in modern banking. He holds a PhD from the State University of New York at Buffalo and has been cited over 9,000 times in scholarly works, underscoring his profound impact on the intersection of technology and finance.

Hanna Halaburda joined New York University Stern School of Business as an Associate Professor of Technology, Operations, and Statistics in September 2019.
In her research, Professor Halaburda studies how technology changes economic forces and thus affects business models and interactions in the marketplace. One strand of her work focuses on competition between digital platforms. Since 2011, she has built a research program in digital currencies and blockchain technologies, including analyses of incentives in consensus protocols, cryptocurrency adoption, smart contracts, and token issuance. Professor Halaburda’s work has been published in Management Science, RAND, American Economic Journal, Games and Economic Behavior, and other academic journals. In 2015, she co-authored Beyond Bitcoin: The Economics of Digital Currency, the first book analyzing digital currencies from an economic perspective. The book’s 2nd edition, co-authored with Miklos Sarvary and Guillaume Haeringer, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2022. Before joining NYU Stern, Professor Halaburda was an Assistant Professor at Harvard Business School and a senior economist at the Bank of Canada. She holds a Master’s degree in Economics from the Warsaw School of Economics and in Philosophy from Warsaw University, and a PhD in Economics from Northwestern University.