Prof.George C. Polyzos

The Chinese University of Hong Kong，Shenzhen

Research Field: Security and Privacy, Distributed Systems & Blockchains, Internet Architecture & Protocols, Internet-of-Things, Smart Grids and Cities, Supply Chains Transparency & Traceability, Digital Identity, Performance Analysis of Computer & Communications Systems

Biography: Prof. Polyzos received his Diploma in Electrical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece and his M.A.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Toronto, Canada. He then joined the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where he was Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, co-director of the Computer Systems Laboratory, member of the Steering Committee of the UCSD Center for Wireless Communications, and Senior Fellow of the San Diego Supercomputer Center. He then moved to the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB) as Professor of Computer Science, where he founded and directed the Mobile Multimedia Laboratory and was Director of the Graduate Program in Computer Science.

Prof. Polyzos has advised or co-advised 16 Ph.D. students and supervised many graduate and undergraduate theses and projects. He has published more than 300 refereed papers and there are more than 12000 citations to his publications (H-index 48). His current research interests include Security and Privacy, Distributed Systems and Blockchains, Internet Architecture and Protocols, Internet-of-Things, Smart Grids, Smart Cities, Supply Chains Transparency and Traceability, Digital Identity, Performance Analysis of Computer and Communications Systems

Dr. Polyzos has been Principal Investigator or has participated in many research projects, with public and/or industrial funding, including by the US National Science Foundation, Digital Equipment Corporation, National Semiconductor Corporation, Hitachi, Microsoft Research, the European Commission, the European Space Agency, and the Greek government. Under his leadership the AUEB/MMlab has participated in a series of Research projects funded by the European Commission (FP7 PSIRP, FP7 PURSUIT and H2020 POINT) that developed Publish-Subscribe Internetworking, an Information-Centric Networking (ICN) architecture. FP7 project PURSUIT received the Future Internet Award in 2013. He also led MMlab’s participation in H2020 projects SOFIE (Secure Open Federation for Internet Everywhere), which developed technologies for enabling the open interoperation of IoT “silos” and 4th Generation business platforms and InterConnect (Interoperable Solutions Connecting Smart Homes, Buildings and Grids), which contributed to the democratization of efficient energy management, through a flexible and interoperable ecosystem where demand side flexibility can be soundly integrated with effective benefits to end-users.

Dr. Polyzos has served on the editorial board of IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, Journal of Reliable Intelligent Environments, Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing, and has served as guest editor for: IEEE Personal Communications, Mobile Networks and Applications, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, and Computer Networks and on the Program Committees of many conferences and workshops. He has also chaired the Steering Committee of the ACM SIGCOMM conference on Information-Centric Networking and is now on the Steering Committee of the Wireless and Mobile Networking Conference (IFIP TC6 WG 6.8).

Prof. Zhaojun Yang

Southern University of Science and Technology

Research Field: Finance Theory, Financial Engineering, Mathematical Finance, Quantitative Finance, including Corporate Finance, Asset Pricing, Funding for High-Tech Businesses, Financial Contracting Theory, Security Design, Asset Securitization, Machine

Biography: Zhaojun Yang earned his Ph.D. in 2000 from Central South University, specializing in Mathematical Finance under the discipline of Probability and Mathematical Statistics. In 2002, he was appointed as a professor by both the Hunan Provincial Department of Personnel and Hunan University. He joined Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) as a full-time professor in 2016 and was selected that same year as one of the first long-term specially appointed professors in the Pengcheng Scholars Program (Finance).

Currently, he serves as a tenured Professor and Doctoral Supervisor in the Department of Finance, School of Business at SUSTech, where he also holds the position of Head of the Finance Department. He holds dual professional titles as Professor of Mathematics and Professor of Finance. Additionally, he is Vice Chairman of the Quantitative Finance and Insurance Branch of the Chinese Society of Optimization, Overall Planning and Economic Mathematics, and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of International Money and Finance.

He has published nearly 200 academic papers in renowned journals such as JFQA, Journal of Risk and Insurance, IJIO, Journal of Corporate Finance, JEDC. According to the global social science research network SSRN, he ranks among the top 0.32% of authors worldwide.

He has supervised 27 Ph.D. graduates, many of whom have been selected for prestigious talent programs such as the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars. He has received the Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Supervisor Award from both Hunan Province and SUSTech, and was honored as one of SUSTech’s Top Ten Graduate Mentors for the class of 2025. A doctoral dissertation he supervised was selected for the 2025 Contemporary Economics Doctoral Innovation Program—the only student from Guangdong Province to receive this honor to date.

He is currently leading the first Key Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Management Science Department) undertaken by a Shenzhen university, titled “Financing Model Design for Asset-Backed Securitization of SMEs Based on Blockchain Technology.” His research areas include financial theory, mathematical finance, quantitative finance, fintech, and financial contract theory and applications.

Prof. Georgios Theodoropoulos

Southern University of Science and Technology, China

Georgios Theodoropoulos is a Chair Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in Shenzhen. He moved to Shenzhen from Durham University in the UK where he was Executive Director of the Institute of Advanced Research Computing and held a Chair in the School of Engineering and Computing Sciences. Prior to that he was a Senior Research Scientist with IBM Research where he played a strategic role in the establishment of IBM’s Exascale Systems research roadmap for Europe at the company’s Smart City Technology Centre in Ireland. He has held an honorary Chair at the Trinity College Dublin and senior appointments at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and the University of Birmingham, UK where he was Director of one of the UK’s e-Science Centres of Excellence.   His research contributions are in the areas of Info-Symbiotic Systems, Distributed Simulation and Distributed Virtual Environments, Parallel and Distributed Computer Systems, Complex and Multi-agent systems and workload optimised systems for data-driven analytics. 

He is an Academician of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, an Academician of the World Academy of Art and Science, a Fellow of the British Computer Society, Board Member and the Chief Operating Officer of the Info-Symbiotics Systems Society, an Accredited Board Director by the Singapore Institute of Directors, a Chartered Engineer, and holds a PhD from the University of Manchester, UK.

Title: Digital Twins for Sustainable Blockchain Systems

Abstract: Global sustainability challenges are becoming increasingly complex and multifaceted, exacerbated by the rapid pace of environmental degradation, climate change, resource depletion and geopolitical and economic instability. At this era of significant uncertainty there is a need to put at the disposal of industry, policy and decision makers novel technological and force multipliers. AI-driven Digital Twins and Blockchain are key technologies in this endeavour. Digital Twins provide a powerful paradigm for linking together systems, computational models, simulations, data, and stakeholders, enabling the development of trustworthy, explainable, holistic, contextual, and cognitive analytics and decision-support ecosystems.  While Blockchain and tokenization provide decentralized solutions for traceability and accountability. Their combined power accelerates innovation in a wide range of sectors and applications including manufacturing, smart cities, healthcare, energy, infrastructure systems and climate finance. The talk will explore these two technologies proposing the use of Digital Twins as a viable approach for the dynamic management of Blockchain systems to enhance efficiency and governance. A Digital Twin framework specifically designed for this purpose will be introduced, with a discussion on the technical challenges involved, including simulation and optimization, state reflection, and decentralized system reconfiguration.