Ed McNierney has served as a Chief Technology Officer and senior engineering executive at a wide range of technology companies, from two-person startups to the Fortune 100. He has commercialized innovations from high-end graphics hardware to multi-terabyte online mapping services and has been involved in the blockchain and cryptocurrency community since 2014. Most recently he led competition design and engineering at the XPRIZE Foundation, driving radical innovations in artificial intelligence, VR, robotic avatars, and machine learning. As CTO and VP of Engineering at the One Laptop per Child Foundation he managed the hardware and software teams that brought personal computing to millions of children in developing countries. Ed has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Chemistry from Dartmouth College.

John Lester is a community builder and fintech pioneer. He has led projects and teams from startups to Fortune 100 companies, and his background includes neuroscience, cryptocurrencies, metaverse and NFT development. John is an active member of leading NFT projects where he pioneers the use of NFTs in virtual words, fashion, decentralized identity, artist collectives, and fractionalized IP governance. As VP of Operations for Oneiro, he is focused on the development of ndau’s software infrastructure including next-generation versions of the ndau wallet app and expanding ndau’s validator node ecosystem.

Rob is an online pioneer, experienced entrepreneur that has built three venture-backed start-ups with successful exits, including Galt Technologies, sold to Intuit in 1995; WiseWire, acquired by Lycos in 1997; and Affinnova, which was acquired by Nielsen in 2015. He created the first commercially-available stock quote and portfolio management service on the Internet and served as Vice President and General Manager at a top 3 public Internet company with over 25 products and 350 employees. Rob has brought more than 50 products to market, including financial services, online clubs, search engines and AI platforms. Rob received a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Rochester Institute of Technology and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business. He is also a decorated US Naval Flight Officer with 18 combat missions.

Ciarán Hynes is co-founder and Managing Partner at COSIMO Ventures, a deep technology firm specializing in Blockchain. He is also a serial entrepreneur, investor and Board Director with companies including Gecko Governance, Locatible, Nova Leah and Oneiro. He has helped navigate and develop their U.S. infrastructure and expand into the U.S. market. He has over ten years of deep tech market experience and leverages his extensive network of investors, advisors, government agencies and business leaders throughout the U.S. to bring strategic benefits to these organizations. He has won international awards and has spoken at many prestigious international conferences and events.

Ken is a pioneer in AI and machine learning and invented search engine collaborative filtering. He holds more than 40 patents, two of which were proven to be responsible for more than 20% of Google’s ad revenue. Prior to COSIMO, he was COO of Keane Advisors, where he developed new algorithms and technology for trading and asset allocation. Before Keane, he served as CTO of Vringo while teaching as an adjunct professor at NYU. He also founded WiseWire, where he served as CEO and CTO (after WiseWire was sold to Lycos, he served as Lycos’ CTO). Ken graduated second in his class from Duke University with BAs in Electrical Engineering, CS, Mathematics, and Physics. Ken also has a Master’s in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University.